


dans votre cœur

by Love_Me_Dead



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Elounor, English!Harry, F/M, Fluff, French, M/M, french!Louis, it doesn't last too long don't worry, mentions of domestic abuse, mentions of drug addiction, oh god what else, there's some elounor in there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:06:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_Me_Dead/pseuds/Love_Me_Dead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis was whisked away from his mother when he was young. He was taken to France with his aunt and uncle and spent sixteen years in Bordeaux with them. The summer before his senior year, his mum regains custody of him and he's brought back to England. His senior year is spent in a brand new city with a language he has a basic understanding of. Louis doesn't know if he'll survive, honestly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dans votre cœur

**Author's Note:**

> Wow so I'm super stoked to be sharing this work with you all. I've been working on it since April and I'm so excited. Much thanks to my beta, Kaitlyn for all her hard work and her amazing compliments.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy! xx

“You’re not well, Jay,” Marie says, French accent thicker since the last time they spoke. 

Jay looks up at her, a dazed look in her eyes behind a glassy film of tears. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after my own son, Marie,” she speaks in a sharp tone, the same one that used to bring Marie down and make her hurt when they were younger.

Marie shakes her head, gaze drifting around the flat. There were empty beer and wine bottles littered across the floor along with fast food wrappers, dirty dishes and clothes lying in small heaps. The telly sits across from a ratty, very stained sofa, a thick layer of dust over the screen. A few children’s books lay around haphazardly, colourful pages looking out of place in the dank room. The room smelled hot and stuffy like no one had remembered or bothered to open a window in a few days and dust motes hung in the air, drifting lazily in the sun that streamed through a crack in the curtains.

“You’re ill,” Marie repeats. “Louis can’t grow up in this.”

“He’ll be fine,” Jay spits, face reddening with the threat of tears. 

“Johannah, you can hardly take care of yourself let alone a three year old child. This environment is toxic and exposing him to it is awful. Do you want your son to be a regular child that goes to the park?”

“Yes, but-“

“He can’t have that if he’s with you. When was the last time you cooked for him?”

Jay’s face falls into her hands as she begins to cry. Marie almost feels bad but stamps down the feeling before it has a chance to fester. Her sister is ill and Louis needs a proper home. Tears can’t faze her now.

“That’s not fair, Ri,” Jay mumbles into her hands.

“I’m sorry, Jay. But it’s all settled now. Robert and I have custody of him and we’re taking him to live with us in France.”

“That’s not fair! I’m never gunna see him again!” Jay begins to get hysterical and her voice raises an octave.

“You have full visitation right, Jay. You can see him whenever you want.”

“But I can’t because I don’t have the money to fly to fucking France!”

Marie sighs, wondering for a fleeting moment how hard this must be for her. “Get clean and get a proper job. Then you’ll have the money to visit. Until then, you can call whenever you like.”

Jay sobs into her hands, presumably unable to come up with an argument to that. Robert appears in the doorway, tugging Louis along with one hand and carrying a large suitcase of the boy’s possessions in the other. The toddler reaches up with a tiny fist, rubbing at his eyes and yawning. When he sees his mother, he pulls quickly away from Robert and rushes towards his mother, conforming to her side and clutching at her. She opens her arms, wrapping them around him and he buries his face in her chest.

“Mummy,” he whimpers softly, voice slurred with fatigue and his general inability to talk.

“Hey, Boo,” she chokes out through her tears, fingers drifting through his hair. 

“Mummy, I’m hungry,” he says.

“I know, Boo. I’ll tell you what, go with your Auntie Marie and Uncle Robert and they’ll get you some food, all right?”

“But…”

“Shh, shh,” she coos. “They’ll be taking care of you for a little while.”

“But whyyy?” He whines, pulling away and looking at her with wide eyes.

Jay forces a small, fond smile. “I’m sick. And-and I can’t take care of you for a while.”

He nods slowly and Marie thinks that she can see the cogs in his brain working.

“I’ll call you, all right? Every day.”

He nods again. “I love you,” he babbles.

“I love you too, very much. Be good for your Aunt and Uncle.”

Marie steps forward, plucking Louis from her side and trying not to let her heart break as she hears both her sister and nephew begin crying. 

 

The sun was bright as it beat down upon the sidewalk. It was still too weak to cause a burn during short distances but it might add a kiss of a tan onto the pastier skin tones. But the heat was enough that pants could be too warm and there were many people beginning to opt for capris or shorts instead. The nice weather had brought people to the streets and to the parks, had caused a deluge of couples from their bundles inside to the outside world to finally soak up the sun after a long winter.

Louis traipsed down the street, hand-in-hand with his girlfriend and laughing their way through a conversation as he walked her home. He walked with her to her door and chuckled as she leaned in to hug him. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Bye,” she murmurs against his chest.

His fingers drift under her chin. “I love you,” he tells her, kissing her softly. 

She giggles, pulling away after a second. “I love you too.”

Louis watches her walk away, telling her goodbye before turning and heading home in the warm afternoon sun. He paused while he walked, pulling up the hem of his jeans a little more as sweat beaded on his skin and waves of heat pulsed through him. He finally reaches the shade of his home and toes off his shoes, bounding upstairs to grab a coke and toss his backpack down on the floor of his bedroom.

He begins playing some music off his laptop, shaking his hips and beginning to dance awkwardly as he changed into a pair of shorts. He tripped and stumbled, catching himself on his bed before sitting down and perusing Youtube for some new music. He hears his phone vibrate and lifts it up, seeing the text is from Eleanor. He grins and taps out a response, dropping his phone back beside him on the bed and lifting his laptop onto his lap.

Louis and Eleanor had been together for about six months now and Louis was smitten. He’d been infatuated with everything that was the petite brunette for quite some time and now that he was with her, he felt on top of the world. He was sure he loved her and he was quite sure that she felt the same way and thinking of that always made his head spin a little. 

He hears the door open after looking at photos and chatting with a few friends on Facebook for a while. He sits up, knowing it would be his aunt or uncle home from work. They don’t call for him and he hears them coming up the stairs. He quickly tells Alex to hold on as there’s a knock on his door and he calls for the person to enter. Uncle Robert pushes the door open, offering a small smile as he walks in slowly and sits on the edge of the bed. 

“Your mum contacted us,” he says softly, skipping pleasantries.

Louis watches him, confusion clear on his face. His mum only contacted them on Louis’s birthday to speak to him and sometimes on Aunt Marie’s birthday. She used to call more often but she explained the lengthening periods between her calls with happy words like “I’m getting my life back together”. She never called bar for those two occasions. It just didn’t happen.

“She says that she wants to have you back in her life,” Uncle Robert murmurs.

Louis shakes his head a little. “N-no,” he stammers, refusing to believe it. “No, she can’t have me. I have a life here.”

Uncle Robert nods a little. “We’ll do our best to have you stay but obviously the courts will be in her favour because she’s your mother.”

He shakes his head again. “But I have friends here.. I have Eleanor.”

“I know, Louis. But there’s nothing we can do about it if she wins you back.”

Louis’s hand searches for Uncle Robert’s, taking it and clutching it tightly like he did when he was younger.

 

Louis immerses himself in his friends and schoolwork for the remainder of the year, effectively forgetting about the threat of his mother taking him back to England. He doesn’t mention it to Eleanor or any of his friends, worried that he’d make it more likely to happen if he spoke about it. So he keeps his head down, keeps silent and continues life as normal. For a day or two after he discovered he might be taken back to England, Eleanor asked him if something was wrong because apparently he was acting off but he brushes it off and tells her he’s fine and they make out for a little bit. And maybe he was trying to read some Wikipedia articles in English but he tells himself that he’s just trying to reconnect with his native culture.

He asks for updates on the case but is given no details apart from short replies from his Aunt and Uncle. The entire situation makes him uneasy and he really doesn’t like it because he really, really doesn’t want to leave behind everything he has here to live with a woman who neglected him in favour of getting high. He knows that her addiction isn’t her fault and he knows he shouldn’t resent her for anything but he can’t help it. All his memories of England are just feelings like hungry, sad and cold and he doesn’t remember much of it being fun. 

Louis miraculously survives through the end of the year and gets pleasing grades and he’s almost forgotten about the threat of going back to England. That is, until he’s home alone the day after he received his yearbook and he’s ghosting around in the kitchen to find something to eat when the phone rings. Curious and knowing his Aunt and Uncle are out, he heads for the phone with an Oreo in hand and picks it up.

“Bonjour,” he answers, staring at the cookie and not wanting to eat it until the call is over.

“Louis, sweetheart?” A familiar British voice replies.

Louis pauses, mouth falling comically open. “Ehm… Mum?”

“Yes, Louis, it’s me.”

He shakes his head as it goes _clunk_ with the sudden English. Louis knows English and he’s all right at it and he can hold a conversation but he prefers French. “Er… ‘Ello,” he says, cringing at the sound of his voice ringing in his ears.

“Hi, darling. How are you?” She asks, voice full of fondness that he’s never really been able to reciprocate.

“I am good,” he stumbles over the words. It’s been awhile. “’Ow are you?”

“I’m lovely. Have your aunt and uncle spoken to you about the case?”

He nods. “Yes.”

“How do you feel about it? About moving back to England?”

He blinks a few times, looking down at his feet. “I.. er… I want stay to ‘ere…”

“That’s understandable and I know you’ll miss France very much. But I’m better now, Louis. I want to have you back in my life and I want you to be a part of your sisters’ lives.”

“Sisters?” He asks, looking up and finding a place to sit. She never mentioned sisters. 

“Yes, Louis. You’ve four beautiful half-sisters,” she says, a smile evident in her voice.

“Oh,” he breathes because really, she never mentioned sisters. Did she not think that was an important thing to mention during one of his annual calls?

“Do you want to know a little bit about them?”

“Oui,” he chokes out.

“Well, the eldest is Charlotte and she’s nine. We call her Lottie for short. And then there’s Felicité, Fizzy, who’s seven. And then the twins, Daisy and Phoebe are four.”

Louis nods a little. “I… I will like meeting them…”

“They’re very excited to meet you.”

A small silence falls over them and Louis can hear a small girlish squeal. “So, I’m returning to Angle – England?”

“Probably. How do you feel about that?”

He looks down at his left hand, seeing that it’s quivering in his lap. “I… I will like it after time.”

“You’ll adjust to it. How are things over there?” She asks, obviously trying to make conversation or learn about what he’d be leaving behind.

“Nice,” he answers, not having the heart to talk about Eleanor and Alex and all the other friends and people and the school he’ll be torn away from. Really, he wants to rage about them to her, spit the words at her and tell her that she’s tearing him away from a life that he loves and a life he’s used to.

“I’m very glad,” she says softly. “I should probably go. Daisy is starting to climb the walls. I’ll call back later.”

“Au revoir,” he says with a forced chuckle.

“Bye, Boo,” she says. “I love you.”

He nods and hangs up because he doesn’t really love her back. He can’t remember what she looks like and only knows because of a photo up on the mantle of Aunt Marie with her on the former’s wedding day. 

He sits on the couch, breathing heavily until it finally begins to sink in. He’s moving back to England. There’s no if or maybe about it anymore; he’s going to be leaving everyone here behind and he’s going to have to accept that. He began to cry as he sat there, feeling the weight of his phone in his pocket and being reminded of his girlfriend and his friends. Was he going to be forced to break up with Eleanor? He wipes at his eyes, choking back a sob.

He doesn’t want to go to England and it’s as simple as that. He doesn’t want to go to a houseful of little girls that his mum failed to mention and he really doesn’t want to go to an English school where all the rest of the students have been learning English since birth. He doesn’t want to be such an outcast. He doesn’t want to leave the happy little niche he’s found in France.

Louis swats at his tears, willing to make them stop as he remembers the cookie in his fingers. He looks down at it, not hungry for it anymore as his stomach twists in upset and nervous knots. He tosses it into the wastebasket beside him and stares at the wall across from him where there sits an unused fireplace. His heart clenches as he realizes he won’t be spending Christmas mornings sitting on the hearth to open presents. A new wave of tears comes over him and he curls in on himself.

The front door opens and closes in quick succession and Louis can hear two voices speaking in hushed tones. He knows it’s his aunt and uncle and he knows that if he weren’t so upset, he’d sit up and try and listen to their conversation. But as it is, he’s too busy wiping at his eyes and feeling sorry for himself to eavesdrop. He listens to their footsteps approaching and feels Aunt Marie sit down next to him, still in her skirt and blazer from work.

“Louis,” she whispers, her hand spanning across his back. “What’s wrong?”

He sniffs, wiping at his eyes. “My… my mum called…”

There’s a small silence and he can see Aunt Marie press her lips together. “I’m sorry you had to find out that way.”

“I don’t want to move.”

She rubs his back soothingly just like she would when he was young and was sick or had awoken from a nightmare. “I know, love.”

“I have sisters. I have four little sisters and she didn’t bother telling me about them.”

Aunt Marie keeps rubbing his back, staying silent.

“I don’t want to live with her.”

“She’s your mother. She’s missed you a lot over the years.”

“Missed me enough to tell me about my sisters?”

“It’ll be good for you, Louis. You’ll like England.”

He sighs, ignoring the tears in his eyes. His mood is worsened when Aunt Marie chuckles a little bit.

“You look so much like your mother when you do that,” she tells him, hand brushing at his hair. He leans into the touch, laying his head on her shoulder.

Uncle Robert sits on the arm of the sofa beside Louis, squeezing his shoulder and Louis shuts his eyes tight. He doesn’t want to leave the aunt and uncle who are so much more like parents than his actual mother and father. 

“I wish you didn’t have to leave either,” Aunt Marie whispers, stroking his hair.

Louis feels his face his face contort and he hides his face in Aunt Marie’s shoulder. He feels her arm wrap around his shoulders and he hates it because it tethers him further to France. 

 

It’s a couple of days before he breaks it to any of his friends. He lies to Eleanor about missing her texts, telling her that he’s come down with a stomach bug and is too busy hugging the toilet to check his phone. Thankfully, she buys it and sends him texts telling him to feel better. In reality, he spends most of this time moping around and listening to soppy music and crying. 

When he finally does muster up the courage, he texts Eleanor and asks her to meet him at the park. After assuring and reassuring her that he’s feeling fine, he dresses quickly and heads to the park, hands stuffed in his pockets. He finds a seat on the swings, rocking back and forth in the cheap plastic seat and catching his palm between the metal links a few times. 

He stays sitting when he sees Eleanor approach and take the swing next to him. She mirrors his position but peers over at him, long brown hair falling over her shoulder. He stares down at the sand beneath his feet, letting his toe drift through it as he runs over the words carefully in his head. He’d practiced them about a thousand times in front of the mirror and he wants there to be some pleasantries before he jumps right into it and breaks the bad news to her that he’s moving. He might be a bit of a dick but he’s not that much of a dick.

“Are you okay, Lou?” She asks, breaking the silence.

He nods, slowly. “How are you?” 

“I’m all right…”

“So… I have some news.” He glances over at her, teeth capturing his lip 

She looks at him expectantly, eyes wide and a little fearful and Louis is suddenly struck with a pang in his stomach. She’s worried that he’s breaking up with her. He reaches over and holds out his hand for her, which she tentatively takes.

“I’m moving back to England,” he whispers, watching her and biting into his lip harder.

The sudden spectrum of emotions that crosses over her face would be almost comical if he wasn’t upset. Her eyes narrowed with confusion before widening and displaying the soft brown colour perfectly. And soon her eyes were filling with tears and she looked like she was fighting off crying as she glanced up at the sky and blinked. Louis squeezes her hand.

“A-are you breaking up with me?” she asks in a small, terrified voice.

“No, no,” he shakes his head. “But my mum… she’s getting me back. I’m moving to England in a few weeks.”

Eleanor hiccups, tears spilling over. Louis stands, pulling her up and into his arms and holding her tight while she cries against his shoulder. It lasts for a little while before she pulls back, arms still around his waist and looks up at him. Her makeup is running down her face and Louis is reminded of the time a few months ago when her cat died and he took her out to a shitty movie and they ended up laughing. 

“Are you okay with a long-distance relationship?” he asks, looking down at her.

She nods quickly. “Just as long as I have you,” she mumbles.

He feels himself grin. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Louis never thought his heart would ache as much as it did after hearing her say that.

 

By the time summer begins to peak, Louis is packed and set to move to England the following day. Aunt Marie and Uncle Robert take him out to dinner that night and give him a going away present of a new pair of shoes. It’s not some grand gesture but they’re nice shoes: low cut black converse. He thinks he’ll be wearing them a lot and will probably wear them on the plane tomorrow. 

Louis has a room waiting for him in England so all he has to pack are the posters on his wall, the clothes in his drawers and the books on his shelves (along with other little things that he’s definitely keeping). Another present that he got was a small French flag about the size of a piece of paper and a small sticker of it, too. He feels like a tourist carrying it out with him after dinner but it’ll be a little reminder of home for him to put up on his wall and he can put the sticker in his locker when the school year starts.

He showers and they make sure all his things are in order and then he falls into bed. It takes a long time for him to fall asleep mostly because he’s dreading moving so much and the nerves he’s got are making his brain hum with some kind of electricity and it’s making his entire circulatory system buzz. He finally begins dozing around two in the morning, falling asleep shortly after.

Crappy morning radio music wakes him at seven in the morning. Louis sits up, rubbing at his eyes and sighing heavily. It’s worse than waking up on a Monday morning when he has history first block. He forces himself out from under the warm duvet and stands, shutting the alarm off and flicking the light off. His room looks bare in the pale morning light and he thinks about how much he’s gunna miss this room that he knows he hated at first.

He dresses quickly and shoves his pajamas in his carryon bag, not letting himself fall back onto the bed and fall asleep. He slips his phone into his pocket and heads downstairs, finding that Aunt Marie is up and making him a breakfast of eggs on toast. Louis starts the kettle, making himself a quick cup of tea. By the time his tea is done, his breakfast is too and Aunt Marie sits with him at the table, eating a bowl of cereal. 

“You’ll like England,” she reassures him as he nibbles at his egg on toast.

Louis nods, taking a brave bite of his breakfast.

“Really. It’s a beautiful country.”

“I’ll miss France. I’ll miss my friends and my girlfriend and you.”

Uncle Robert walks in, pouring himself coffee. “I hope you miss me too,” he jokes lightly, sitting down beside him.

Louis sets down his toast, leaning over and hugging him tightly. “I will.”

“Good,” he says, voice gruff and low. Louis knows he’s not too used to showing as much emotion as this entire process has brought out of them all and Louis wants to pat him on the back and tell him that it’s okay to not be okay and that it’s okay for him to cry.

He resumes eating a moment later, being able to choke back half the breakfast before his stomach flops with nerves and he’s sure that he’ll throw up on the plane if he eats any more. Once he’s cleared his dishes, he heads off to brush his teeth and quickly throws those things into his bag as well. His bag is finally fully packed and all he has to do is put on his jacket and slip his feet into a pair of shoes and he’s leaving.

It’s difficult leaving the house and Louis nearly starts to cry as he gets in the car. He can vaguely remember being very small and crying as he pulled up to the house, wanting his mum. But nearly fifteen years had passed since then and he had grown to love the place with its rusty-red coloured paint and the small garden in the front. He loved the little swing-set in the backyard and he loved the back steps where he used to sit and eat ice creams with friends.

They pull away from the house and Louis leans against the window of the car, watching the city pass by. He forces himself to look down at his lap, fingers fiddling together and phone sitting dead in his pocket. He knows that Eleanor is meeting him at the airport to say goodbye and he’s really, really not ready to kiss her for the last time before Christmas if he’s lucky.

The airport is fairly quiet seeing as it’s hardly eight in the morning. Eleanor is standing just outside the doors wearing a pair of sweatpants and a grey beanie over her hair. She’s clutching to a cup of Starbucks, holding it close until she sees Louis when she almost drops it in her haste to grab him in a hug. Louis is the only one to drop something (his bag) as he runs forward and grabs her around the waist, burying his face into her shoulder.

“I love you,” she whispers into his ear, pulling him in close.

Louis feels his heart stammer and sink. Seven months ago, he would have given anything to hear Eleanor tell him she loved him and to be holding her. Now he wished that he’d never acted on his infatuation so he didn’t have to say goodbye to her. 

“I love you too,” he whispers back, hearing Aunt Marie pick up his bag and chuckle a little.

She pulls back, wiping at her eyes with one arm still wrapped around him. “You have to call me every day,” she says softly, sounding vulnerable and sad.

“Of course. We’ll Skype every day, all right?”

She nods, leaning into his chest.

Aunt Marie lays a hand on his shoulder. “Your plane leaves in an hour,” she says. “You have to get through security.”

He shakes his head, pulling Eleanor closer and kissing her quickly so that it doesn’t hurt as much. They quickly pull apart and she grabs onto his hand, walking with him to the security desk. Eleanor hugs him again before scampering off, telling him she loved him one more time. Then it was him and Aunt Marie and Uncle Robert, looking grim.

Aunt Marie hugs him first, pulling him close to her and kissing his cheek. “You’re a wonderful person, Louis,” she tells him and he can hear the strain in her voice from forcing tears back. “I love you very much.”

Uncle Robert hugs him after that, clapping him on the back. “I’ll miss you,” he mumbles.

Louis nods, biting his lip hard to not cry as he turns and heads for the desk. He forces a smile up at the officer and hands over his passport.

 

The flight goes all right. Louis doesn’t really mind it because flying is fun and he’s always been mildly interested in planes. The only bad part about the flight is that he spends half of it crying and the old woman he’s sitting next to asks him if everything is all right in English many times and he’s not feeling up to translating. So he just nods and tells her in broken English that he doesn’t speak it and then curls up and falls asleep. 

Unfortunately, the flight is little over an hour and a half so Louis’s nap is short-lived and soon he’s beginning to get off the plane with the old lady who insists on speaking to him in English with a cheery tone. He follows the woman in front of him towards baggage claim, heading down a flight of stairs until he finds the carousel and the people waiting around for others.

He licks his lips, playing with the hem of his sleeve as he walks into the international arrivals and looks around. The only picture he’s really seen all these years was the one above the fireplace of her when she was seventeen and healthy and not a mother of four daughters and one son. He peers over the heads of the other people in search of his mother and takes a deep breath when he says an auburn-haired woman holding a small sign full of hearts and pink and glitter that says “Bonjour Louis!” in poorly written block-letters.

Louis sees her face first and immediately feels awful. She looks so happy, her features set into a warm smile; the kind of smile that melts into features and can’t be held back. She’s got long auburn hair that looks like it was meticulously styled into place earlier and her makeup is crisp and fresh. Her outfit is casual with a small hint of preplanned elegance and she holds herself tall, looking around for a glimpse of Louis.

He swallows, looking down at his shoes and taking a deep breath as he tries to break out of the throng of people and get towards her. He’s shot with a sudden urge to find the doors and run out and make like he got kidnapped and fly back to France or something. But he takes another deep breath as he walks towards her. He finally gets up to her and realizes that he’s a few inches taller than her.

“Louis?” She asks, grin widening.

“Yes,” he says, voice hushed.

She drops one hand from the sign and leans up, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him in for a hug. He reciprocates, knowing that he’s stiff in her grasp and knowing he won’t be able to make himself relax until he adjusts to life in England.

“You’ve grown up so handsome,” she whispers. “Just like your father.”

Louis nearly flinches at that because he knows that his father left mum when he was very small and that was half the reason she’d gotten into drugs. “Merci,” he chokes out.

She pulls away and looks at him with a fond smile, running a thumb over his ear. “And you’re so French.”

Louis forces a chuckle, pulling out of her arms and smiling. He’s really genuinely trying to be excited because he knows how special this is for her but he can’t make himself be happy because Eleanor, Aunt Marie, Uncle Robert and all of Louis’s friends are back home and they’re all probably upset. Mum’s happiness and the happiness of his sisters seems insignificant. He thinks that maybe he should feel bad about not liking this wonderful opportunity to learn English and be indulged into a different culture. 

Mum refrains from doing anything overly gushy (which he’s always disapproved of mums doing with their teenage children because _really_ ) but she’s still carrying around the sign and Louis can feel people’s gazes following them. They walk towards baggage claim and well, Louis is sulking and mum is nearly skipping and happiness is nearly literally dripping out of her every orifice. Her joy brings Louis more pain and annoyance is bubbling just under the surface of his skin.

They grab Louis’s things from baggage claim and begin heading outside to the car. Louis gets his first glimpse of England as they exit the airport and the sun is shining but there are puddles on the ground and the pavement smells like rain and there are clouds over the horizon. What he can see of the city is pretty, he will admit, and he thinks Aunt Marie was correct about saying England was a beautiful country.

Mum helps him load the car and tells him the passenger side is open and he climbs in the van. The odour of children clings to it; the waxy tang of crayons and the plastic balm of packaged dolls cling to the relatively new seats. There are car seats in the back and there are a few lost bits of what he assumes to be Barbie dolls judging by the tiny shoe beside his foot. He sits, staring at his legs for a little while before mum climbs in next to him and starts the car.

The drive home is relatively silent and mum apologizes a few times for not having a better welcoming party. She tells him about how she wanted to take him out to a restaurant but the twins are still very little and it would just be a hassle and poor Louis would be put on the spot with his English. He just nods at her words, able to piece together her sentences. 

When he does arrive to his new house, it’s not bad at first glance. There are a few trees in the front yard and there’s a bike propped up against the garage door. The house is a pretty green colour and there’s a large hydrangea by the front steps. Louis surveys the house, thinking back to remember if this is the house he spent the first couple years of his life in but he can’t be sure. He looks up to the big living room window and sees four little heads shoot out of sight. 

He helps mum unload and takes the box upstairs, down the hall, in the last room on the right. When he enters, he sees how different it is from his old room and he nearly recoils from it. There’s a bed in the middle of the room (he likes sleeping with his bed against the wall) and it has blue bedspread (his favourite colour is red). There’s a desk with a chair in the corner (where he wants the fucking bed) and a dresser by the door with a picture of mum and Louis when he was little. The walls are plain and Louis plans on changing that soon because he has loads of posters and that flag to put up as well. He decides as he puts the box down to redecorate tomorrow when he isn’t exhausted from waking up at dawn.

Mum walks in and kisses his cheek and he’s still not used to affection from her. “How do you like it?” She asks, voice a little nervous.

“I.. I love it,” he stammers.

She smiles widely. “I’ll go and start dinner and you can feel free to set up or meet the girls.”

Louis nods, sitting down on the bed and looking at the things around him. The room feels like it’s staring at him, the walls telling him that he’s unwelcome here and making him curl up in loneliness. He lets out a heavy sigh as he realizes that he’s not going to be able to spend this summer hanging out with friends and laughing and forgetting about how lonely he is because he doesn’t even have any friends yet and he’ll have to wait for school to attempt that.

A small blonde head interrupts his thoughts. “You’re sadder than I thought you’d be,” a bossy voice noted and Louis looked up to see a girl of about nine standing in his doorway. He curses himself for not shutting the door.

“Erm…” Louis stutters, not knowing how to respond.

“And quieter. I’m Lottie, I’m the oldest. Or, I was.”

He nods. “’Ello, Lottie,” he says confidently, throwing in a charming smile for good measure.

“Louis, right?” She asks, sitting down beside him and pronouncing the s at the end and oh god.

“Louis,” he corrects, French accent extremely visible in the British air.

“Tomato, tomahto,” she hisses. “What’s France like?”

“It is beautiful.”

“You talk funny.”

Louis looks down at his feet, feeling annoyed and knowing that if he had the words, he’d be yelling at her about it. “I’m sorry,” is all he can muster, though, as stupid as it is.

She just looks at him. “What kind of things do you like?”

He looks up, smiling at her a little. “I like music. And theatre.”

“Like plays and stuff?”

He nods, watching her.

“That’s lame.”

His heart sinks as the words translate. He’s not quite sure what ‘lame’ means in this context but he does know that it has a negative connotation. He looks down and sighs a little.

“You seem lame. And stupid. Why don’t you speak English?”

Louis looks up at her, confused. “I lived in France.” 

“You’re stupid,” she says, standing up and shrugging.

“Tu es mechante!” He hisses, glaring at her.

She glares right back. “Mum!” She shouts. 

Within a few seconds, mum is in the doorway, hair now tied back but makeup still like it was. She looks like she’s been cooking and Louis feels bad for having her pulled away.

“Yes, sweetheart?” Mum asks, smiling warmly.

“Louis’s being mean,” Lottie whines.

“Louis, don’t be mean to your sisters.”

“Mais, elle est mechante! Elle est un mensonge!” Louis says indignantly, belatedly realizing he’s speaking in French and sighing.

“Uhm.. Just don’t be mean to your sisters.” 

And she walks away, humming to herself. Lottie turns to Louis, smirking malevolently. She sticks out her tongue at him before skipping out, apparently proud that she’d gotten Louis upset. He groans and falls back on the bed, nearly crying at how different it feels from his old bed.

 

Dinner is hell. Lottie somehow managed to talk her sisters into hating Louis as well and so he gets hostility from the other three. Fizzy does ask him a question about France though, which he answers with a shrug but the twins just glare at him. He eats his dinner in near silence, answering shortly to anything Mark, his stepdad, asks him. Once dinner is done, mum brings out a cake and says that it’s for Louis’s arrival. He nibbles his way through it, hardly hungry after eating dry chicken and lumpy mashed potatoes.

Louis stumbles back to his room and hides away in it after dinner, getting on his laptop immediately and going on Facebook. He’s loads of notifications and messages all from his friends and some acquaintances telling him how much they missed him already. 

He spends the rest of his night on Facebook before everyone else logs off and his eyelids are beginning to droop. He shuts his laptop and climbs into bed, too exhausted to cry.

 

The rest of the summer is hellish too. While the sun and hot weather would usually have Louis outside with his friends until his curfew, the lack of knowledge of the place keeps him cowering inside. He stays on his laptop, Skyping with Eleanor and chatting with friends. He also cries a lot but that’s something himself and his pillow share. He spends some time reading books and he likes taking walks in the afternoons when his friends are all out (having fun with each other and doing the things he really should be doing).

He discovers a little bit about his new town. He finds out that there’s a convenience store two blocks away and that there’s an ice cream parlour near there. He discovers the library which is a ten minute walk away and finds some peace between the shelves. They carry French books and he has a very happy time chortling over _Sommes-Nous Seuls Dans L’univers?_ He also enjoys just aimlessly walking around town, watching girls baring their navels and showcasing their legs and watching boys bike and skateboard shirtless all the while whistling at the girls.

Louis’s summer is punctuated with visits to the zoo or the aquarium or the beach with his sisters. He learns to stay a few feet back from them after their first visit to the aquarium when Lottie tripped and blamed it on Louis. The beach visits are his least favourite because the girls stole his shoes and filled them with sand and took them into the water and let them sink away. Mum bought him some new shoes but he doesn’t like them as much as his old ones because he’d gotten those ones in France.

In August, the girls and mum go back-to-school shopping and Louis takes the day to find his school. He doesn’t have to explain to anyone where he’s going and he likes that. So he walks to school, just to find it and discovers there’s another library on the same block as it. He also discovers that the school is a good four kilometers from his house and he’s sweating like a pig by the end of it and has to sit down and cool off in the library for a little while before he makes the hike back home. 

Louis doesn’t go back-to-school shopping. Instead, mum comes home and drops a bag of binders, pens, pencils and erasers on his bed. And that’s that for him.

September is one week away when mum tells him how he’ll be getting to school.

“Louis,” she says, standing in his doorway after an evening of hamburgers and ice cream.

“Mmm?” he looks up from what he’d been typing on his computer and he prepares himself for the nasty _clunk_ as his brain makes the switch from French to English.

“I work early and Mark usually takes the girls to school and then goes to work.”

He looks at her, eyes narrowing a little as he tries to figure out what she means.

“What I’m saying is that neither of us will be able to drive you to school unless you want to be there at seven in the morning.”

He nods. 

“And it takes about an hour to walk so you’d be leaving at seven anyway.”

He nods again, remembering the painful walk he’d taken a few weeks ago and he can almost feel himself growing skinnier at the thought of doing that every day. 

“There’s always public transit, though.”

And with that, mum goes out and spends even more money on him by buying him a monthly bus pass for September. 

A week after that, summer vacation is slotted to end and Louis is scheduled to be going back to school. He spends that entire week crying with Eleanor about how he really, really doesn’t want to go to school here. He tells her that he knows school here will be hard and he won’t have friends to make it fun but his real reason is that he’s scared. He’s scared more than anything of how the students will react to him. Not only is he the new kid but he’s also the new kid that doesn’t speak any English and there’s a high chance that someone will react the way Lottie did. So his chance of making any new friends is slim to none. And his chance of getting good grades this year is about one in a billion because the work will all be in English and his knowledge of the language has grown significantly in his short time in England but he’s still not as good as a native speaker.

So yeah, he’d say he’s pretty mortified of going to school.

 

Louis wakes up to shitty rock music at six thirty on his first day of school. He stumbles out of bed, grabbing his towel and taking a quick shower that does nothing for his drowsiness. Once he gets out, he makes himself tea and a bowl of cereal before he dries his hair and gets dressed in the first outfit his hands touch. It ends up being a pair of black jeans and a blue striped shirt. He packs a backpack full of binder and lined paper and throws in a few pens before grabbing his bus pass and nearly running outside because he has no clue when his bus is supposed to come.

He’s fifteen minutes early for his bus. He stands and waits in the late-summer sun for fifteen minutes until his bus pulls up and he gets on, smiling at the driver and trying to pretend that he hasn’t just stood for fifteen minutes with nothing else to do. The bus itself is fairly full but Louis finds a seat to himself and leans against the window, turning up the music on his iPod to drown out the idle conversations around him. 

Across the aisle from him is a thin girl with her black hair tied back. She’s wearing a pretty skirt and she has a loud voice, English accent holding slight hints of Indian roots, just like her dark skin does. Louis watches her from the corner of his eye, watches her poke her curvy friend who looks kind of like a lost puppy and watches them both gawk at him and begin talking about him, not bothering to keep their voices low.

“I wonder where he’s from,” the dark-skinned girl says.

“I don’t think I’ve seen him around,” the puppy-eyed girl says.

“Maybe he’s new.”

“You should talk to him.”

“No way! That’d be so creepy!”

The puppy-eyed girl laughs shrilly, looking down at her phone again.

“What do you reckon his name is?”

“I don’t know, Munisha, ask him!”

Munisha, the dark-skinned girl, turns and looks at her. “No way!” 

Louis takes the small lull in the conversation as a chance to up the volume of his music so he can block them out. He doesn’t know them yet but he already knows that they seem really annoying and he hopes that he has no classes with either of them, especially Munisha. 

Ten minutes later, Louis is getting off the bus and he’s stuck behind Munisha. Her skirt is flowy and long and he’s nearly worried he might step on the hem. He remembers vaguely when he did that with Eleanor and how she’d thrown him a glare and pulled her hand out of his. So he stays a pace behind her and shoots another tight- lipped smile at the driver before stepping out of the bus and walking towards the school.

Louis glances down at his hand, seeing the numbers written on the back of his hand. One thousand two hundred and twenty one. That was his locker number and since he had no friends to meet up with, that was where he was headed. He walks into the school, chatter ringing in his ears now that he’s taken out his headphones in case he has to ask for directions. He looks around a bit before ducking towards the right and following the hall to the science and maths area. He peers at the numbers on the lockers and sees that he’s in the two-thousand area. 

It takes him a while before he heads upstairs and finds that his locker is in the English hall, right by a window with a view of a courtyard that would be beautiful if it weren’t so enclosed and reminiscent of a prison. He finds his locker, throws his things inside and slaps his new lock on it before sitting against it, deciding to play on his phone for the time being.

After a few minutes of this, a dark-haired boy walks up to him, looking at him. “Excuse me,” he murmurs.

Louis looks up, scooting over a little so the boy has an easier time getting in his locker. He looks back down at his phone, continuing the game he was playing and ignoring the boy as he began to personalize his locker, using magnets to keep a few pictures on the door of it and slapping a mirror to eye-level. Once he’s added a few stickers and a small band poster, he sits down against his locker and beside Louis, peering at him again.

“Are you new?” He asks, not looking at him and instead taking a piece of paper out of his binder and grabbing a black pen. His hand began to trace out some lines and Louis tore his gaze away.

“Yes,” he says softly, looking up at his face. The boy’s black hair is pushed with some nice-smelling product and he has a really nice bone structure. He has thick, dark eyelashes lining his brown eyes and he’s concentrated on his drawing.

“What’s your name?” He asks, turning away from his drawing and looking at him.

“Louis,” he says, cursing himself for how unbelievably French he sounds.

The boy chuckles a bit, entire face lighting up with it. “I’m Zayn. Where’re you from? Nowhere in England, I’d guess.”

“I lived in France.”

“France? Why’d you move here?”

Louis looks down at his legs. “I.. I do not know how to say.”

Zayn peers at him. “I know a bit of French. Try me.”

He looks down and takes a deep breath, explaining some of the story to Zayn and leaving out the questionable parts such as mum’s drug addiction or the way his sisters were treating him. He basks in how easily the words flow when they’re in French and finishes, wishing that he could speak that way for the rest of the day.

“So, your mum was sick and you were adopted by your aunt and uncle and taken to France? And now your mum is better and you’ve four sisters and you’re with her again?”

Louis nods mutely because Zayn is talking too fast and he kind of mumbles a little bit so it’s hard for him to understand. 

“Wow, that’s really shit,” Zayn says. “I’m sorry.”

Louis shrugs. “I’m going to be good.”

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “Stick with me and you’ll be fine.”

Louis looks up and smiles a little, wondering if he’d just made a friend. 

“Hey, what’s your first class?” Zayn asks after a moment. 

Louis fumbles with his pocket, finally extracting a small piece of paper that was folded into quarters. He unfolded it and looked at the timetable written on it. “Erm, French,” he says.

“Right up your alley, then,” he laughs, taking the piece of paper from him and looking it over before handing it back. “We’ve got drama together second block and then chemistry in fourth.”

Louis nods, refolding it and pushing it into his pocket again. He’s about to say something before the bell rings and he swallows back his nervousness for his first class. Zayn gives him a smile and tells him he’ll see him later before merging with the sudden flow of people and disappearing into the crowd. Louis nods again, joining the people and getting jostled by a few people as they walk around him.

He arrives in a small classroom a few minutes later after nearly getting lost twice and following the small hints such as the girl in front of him talking about how she was on her way to French and how much she was dreading it. The classroom is relatively small and has the desks set up in partnerships. There’s an overhead projector at the front of the room facing a double whiteboard and a neatly organized desk just in front of the whiteboard. Above the whiteboard are stupid little pictures saying things like “smile and enter!” and “read books to discover new worlds!” all in French. Louis rolls his eyes a little, taking a random seat.

The teacher, a small Asian woman, looks up from where she’s sitting at the desk and smiles at the students already there. Louis sits uncomfortably in his seat, shifting a little as the room fills up around him. As he expects, the room filters into clumps depending on groups of friends. No one jumps at a chance to sit next to him and he doesn’t take it personally. What else should he expect? A warm welcome and a hug? No, he knew that it was their senior year. They had friends from primary school and from high school and currently all Louis had was a conversation with Zayn.

Once the second bell rings, there’s someone sitting next to Louis. He looks them over quickly before waiting for the teacher to begin speaking. She stands and Louis nearly grins because she looks like she doesn’t even break five feet even with the heeled shoes that she’s wearing. She perches on a stool at the front of the room beside the overhead and looks over the class, smiling.

“Bonjour et bienvenue!” She says happily and Louis isn’t sure whether to like that he’s feeling comfortable in the class or hate that she’s so perky and it’s half eight. “Je m’appelle Madame Chen.”

The class stays quiet (which Louis is thankful for because this is not some primary class and they are not six years old).

“Hello and welcome!” She repeats. “My name is Madame Chen.” She picks up a small duo tang folder and opens it up, beginning to call roll.

Louis waits in silence, watching the other kids around the room and trying to put names to faces. He knows his name is near the end of the list and waits for it to be called. He watches a boy across the room from him put up his name at “Harry” and he looks him over, getting a little distracted and not reacting at first when the teacher calls out “Louis”. 

The room falls silent.

“Louis?” Mme Chen asks again, pronouncing it correctly. “Louis Tomlinson?”

He puts up his hand. “Ici,” he whispers.

“Ah, bon,” she says, smiling at him. 

The rest of the list is called and then the room is reordered by alphabet. Louis is seated next to the boy that caught his eye earlier, the boy called Harry. He’s tall, nearly twice the size of Madame Chen and he’s thin too. He has a head of rich brown curls that fall easily over his face, just like the way a grin sits easily on his face. He wears a plaid shirt overtop of some worn t-shirt that Louis can’t even read and he has beaten Chuck Taylors on his feet.

He’s kind of beautiful. 

The bulk of the class is spent going on about the course this year and what they’ll be studying and other things they’ll be doing. They go over a few verb rules and then are given their first worksheet on proper verb conjugation and the difference between using être or avoir. Obviously, Louis flies through the sheet and is done in about five minutes whereas Harry beside him seems to be stuck on question two out of twenty.

“Fuck, this is so hard,” he mumbles, running a hand through his hair.

Louis can’t help but chuckle at him.

Harry looks over at his paper and groans. “What the hell? How?”

“I lived in France,” he says, fixing his hair.

“Can you help me?”

Louis nods, leaning over and peering at him. “What is trouble?” He asks, looking at him.

“Uhm, all of it? I don’t really understand the instructions.”

“Ooh okay,” he says, nodding and reading them over again. “Again write the sentence but in, ehm, _passé composé_.”

“But how do I know whether to use _être_ or _avoir_?” He asks, sighing.

“Here,” he says, leaning over with his pencil and writing down the page. He wrote the list of verbs and looked at Harry, smiling. “Use _être_ ave- with this.”

Harry turns and looks at him, smiling widely. “Thank you,” he says, beginning to work.

Louis smiles at him, watching him struggle through the sheet. Harry asks for help a few more times throughout the sheet, confused with the double verb rule and just generally confused. Louis nearly asks him why he’s taking the course because he seems like he’s horrible at it and at this rate, he’ll probably fail. But Louis decides not to ask because he both doesn’t have the words and thinks he might come off as mean and insensitive. And in this place with only Zayn to call a friend, he doesn’t want to risk any of that.

The teacher goes over the answer, gives them a little lesson and then some more seatwork to do as homework if they don’t finish it. The other students move around the classroom to find some more friends to chat with as they do work and Louis is vaguely worried Harry’s gunna move when he waves at a pretty blonde girl across the room. But it was just a friendly wave and he soon looks down at his work, shutting the book and probably deciding to do it later.

He turns to Louis, watches him a little as he works hard. He can’t see because his eyes are trained on his paper (which is refreshingly in French). But he can see it a little in his peripheral vision and he can feel his gaze on his back and he’s worried for a moment. Does he look so out of place that Harry is staring? He peeks down at his outfit and reminds himself that his outfit isn’t any different than anyone else’s. He worries a little more until Harry speaks.

“So, why’d you move to England if you were in France?” He asks. “I mean, I’ve just heard that France is really beautiful and wonderful.”

Louis turns and nods, deciding to do his work later as well. “It is very beautiful,” he says. 

“Why’d you move here?”

He takes a deep breath, trying to remember the words Zayn used earlier, the English words that Harry will understand. And he repeats them, fumbling a few words and hoping the meaning stays the same. Through his speaking, Harry’s easy grin disappears into a look of concern and understanding.

“So if it were up to you, you’d still be in France?” He asks.

Louis nods. “But England is very nice.”

He chuckles, grin returning. “Are you gunna go to uni in France?”

He nods again, glancing up at the clock on the wall and beginning to pack his things up in anticipation of the bell.

“Hey, uhm, do you wanna eat lunch with me?” Harry asks and when Louis looks at him he looks almost nervous, bottom teeth dragging across his lip a little bit. 

Louis feels relief surge his veins. He’d been so worried about lunch and what he would do. His backup plan in case he didn’t make any friends was going to be hiding in the library down the street and engrossing himself in the French books there. But now he has an invitation to eat lunch with a pretty boy and he’s relieved.

Harry begins to stumble under his lack of a response. “Uh, if you don’t want to that’s cool. But it’ll probably be just me and my two friends, Liam and Niall. They’re cool, I’m sure they’ll like you.”

Louis nods. “Oui,” he whispers. “I would like that.”

He smiles widely, easily again as the bell rings. “Where’s your locker? I’ll meet you there.”

Louis tells him his locker number and smiles, walking out of class and heading down the stairs and looking around for the drama room. He finds Zayn in the crowd, remembering him saying they had this class together and he leads him to the room, promising to give him a full tour of the school later. 

They enter a small theatre and Louis’s never felt more comfortable in a room. He looks around, seeing the gorgeous stage, painted stark black and the legs and grand drape all pulled up into the fly gallery, exposing the organized wings. The lighting booth above the seats sits in darkness, no stage lights illuminating the stage. The seats in the house are comfortable looking, coloured in a shade of red that’s stunningly harmonious with the rest of the theatre. He drops his binder in one of the seats where everyone else has left their backpacks or purses.

At the very front edge of the stage is a small, thin woman wearing jeans and a nice blouse organising papers as she sits on the stage. She smiles at the students that enter and tell them to take a seat in the first four rows. Zayn leads Louis to sit, sitting in the second row at the very edge and chatting with him.

The entire class goes very well. The teacher gets them to sit on the stage in a circle on black boxes as they go over the course together and the expectations and what it means to respect the theatre. Zayn helps Louis, breaking some of the more complicated things into French for him. Then the class introduces themselves and the teacher speaks about the upcoming play this year and how everyone in the class should audition. It’s not a requirement or an expectation but she’d love some familiar faces in the production. 

Class is soon over and he’s heading back to his locker with Zayn, chatting about random things and Louis is glad that he has this already. He has someone to chat with and walk with and just be with. When Zayn asks where he’s eating, Louis tells him about Harry from his French class and how he invited him to eat with them. Zayn nods, saying that he’ll eat in the art room like he did last year. 

Louis feels bad but he isn’t sure whether he’s allowed to bring Zayn along too. He promises himself that he’ll talk to Harry about it later when he gets to lunch with him and opens his locker, fishing out the packed lunch that mum left for him on the kitchen counter this morning and hoping he didn’t get his food preferences wrong again. Someone appears to his left and he turns as he grabs his lock again and shuts the door, smiling at Harry.

The easy, slightly lopsided grin is back on his face, showing off his perfectly white teeth. “Hey,” he says.

Louis smiles a little wider in return, slapping his lock shut.

“I’ll lead you to where we eat,” he says. “There’s like, this elevator alcove sort of thing and we eat there. Sometimes people come up the elevator and we have to move but otherwise it’s pretty chill.”

He nods, only understanding what he said and wondering what Harry meant by ‘chill’.

Louis is lead down the hall, past a group of catty-looking girls to a small alcove in front of an elevator and a plain door that proclaims “roof access” on it. To Louis’s partial dismay, it has a large deadbolt which means that he can’t climb onto the roof and let himself just sit and watch for a little bit; he can’t put his life on pause for just five minutes.

There are two boys sitting on the floor when he gets there. They both have packed lunches too and one of them is munching on an apple. The one with the apple has brown hair and a face that’s reminiscent of a Labrador puppy with kind brown eyes. A plaid shirt over a plain shirt and jeans make up his outfit. The other one, holding a large sandwich, has blond hair and big blue eyes. He’s wearing simple jeans and a shirt with a logo that Louis doesn’t recognize and doesn’t think sounds terribly important. 

Harry sinks to the ground with his back against the wall, beckoning for Louis to sit next to him. He sits gingerly next to Harry, worried to speak because he knows how thick his accent sounds when contrasted against everyone here’s. The blond one swallows and pipes up before the puppyish one has a chance.

“Who’s this?” He asks, Irish lilt in his voice calming Louis’s nerves a little. He waggles his nearly invisible eyebrows at Harry.

Harry smiles. “This is Louis,” he says. “Louis, this is Niall” – he points to the blond – “and this is Liam.”

Liam looks up from studying his apple and grins widely. “Nice to meet you, Louis,” he greets, every inch of his face and his voice genuine.

“Yeah, hey,” Niall calls, going back to the sandwich in his hands.

“Are you new here?” Liam asks.

Louis begins rifling through his lunch, pulling out a pear. He hates pears and promptly returns it to the bag. “Yes,” he says in a quiet voice with a small nod.

“Where are you from?” 

“Uhm, France.” He looks up to watch Liam’s reaction.

“France? Oh, beautiful place. My sister went there last year and she took loads of pictures.”

Louis smiles a little, pulling out a sandwich. It’s turkey on whole wheat. He’s not a huge fan of whole wheat but his stomach is growling and he doesn’t want to spend the next two classes making weird noises.

“Why’d you come from France?” Niall asks around a mouthful, putting a hand up to cover the sight of his mouth.

Louis takes a breath, balancing his sandwich on his knee as he prepares to reiterate the story for the third time today. He briefly wonders if that’s what it will be like for the rest of the year. 

Harry places a hand on his shoulder, long fingers spanning over most of the space between his shoulder and his neck. “Long story,” he says. 

Niall nods, shrugging and letting it go. He continues eating and Liam shoots Louis another fond look as he finishes his apple and pulls out a granola bar.

“Have you had a good first day?” He asks, unwrapping it.

Louis nods, taking a bite of his sandwich. There’s a good mayo to turkey ratio but there’s more turkey than he’d like and the bread is a little dry. 

“Met anyone other than Harry?” 

He nods again, swallowing. “I ‘ave met Zayn.”

Liam immediately looks up, completely interested. “Malik?” 

Harry laughs to his left, turning and looking at Louis. “Dark hair?” 

“Yes,” Louis nods.

“Funny,” Harry chuckles, looking at Liam. “Liam’s had a crush on him for years.”

Louis’s eyes narrow a little as he tries to figure out what Harry means and Liam makes a loud, indignant squawk.

“Have not!” He calls at Harry. “It’s been like, a month.”

“More like six,” Niall chimes in. “Six straight months of ‘oh my god, did he just go out with Perrie again? Harry is that his sister? Oh my god, look at his body!’.”

Liam rolls his eyes. “It’s not like that at all…”

Niall scoffs a little. “Yeah, okay.”

Louis smiles to himself as the conversation progresses and changes. He doesn’t understand much of what their saying, if any of it, but the tone of their conversation and the way their voices change with their differing emotions is comforting. It feels like his friends back home at lunch, sitting in the cafeteria and talking about whatever was on their mind. The atmosphere itself feels like home, except that Louis can feel himself on the outside of the group and not merging flawlessly with them.

He picks at his lunch while they talk, getting into a mostly one-sided conversation with Liam about football. He compares his schedule with all of theirs and sees that he has history with Liam tomorrow and he has chemistry with Harry and a spare with Niall next block. Niall decides to show him around school properly and Louis decides to not to feel worried that he has none of his friends in his English class. 

When lunch is over, Louis follows him to his locker, having nothing to put away in his. Niall chatters with him, asking him how he likes England and being generally very friendly. Louis hardly understands past the Irish accent and the English words and he just nods, a little (very) overwhelmed. There are more people here than there were at his old school and they’re all knocking into him, shoulders colliding and backpacks slapping. He trails behind Niall until he gets lost in the crowd, unable to see or hear the blond boy is when he starts to panic. 

He’s lost and he can’t see Niall and the hall is just _full_ of people and there are no classrooms and on either side of him is just banks and banks of lockers and people. He pushes his way towards the wall, lucky that there’s a space between the people and the wall. But now he’s pressed up against the wall and he accidentally stepped on a pretty girl’s foot and she glared at him and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

His heart is hammering in his chest and he feels dizzy and he doesn’t understand any of the words around him and he can’t see Niall. He grips onto the wall, shutting his eyes and trying to block out the sound, trying to focus on something and calm down because now his hands are shaking and it’s hard to breathe and he feels like he’s going to cry. His chest tightens and his eyes ache and he just really wants to see someone familiar right now because he’s lost in a crowd of people he can barely understand and he’d love to see Zayn or Niall or Liam or Harry.

“Mate, you all right?” an Irish accent that sounds so familiar asks and Louis’s eyes fly open. He jumps onto Niall, hugging him tightly and not caring about the repercussions or the tall boy that walks by and hisses ‘gay’ at him.

Niall’s hand comes up and rests on Louis’s back, awkwardly returning the hug as he chuckles a little. Louis holds onto him tight, panic ebbing away as he breathes, knowing where he is now. 

“Okay, we’ve only known each other for a half hour, mate,” Niall chuckles again, pulling away from Louis.

“I am sorry,” Louis whispers, taking another deep breath.

“Are you okay?”

Louis nods, the panic lingering around him, clinging to his shirt and hanging off the threads of his jeans.

“Let’s go find some place to sit, yeah?”

Niall takes Louis’s arm, leading him through the crowd and downstairs to the cafeteria. People are leaving the tables and it’s nearly empty save for the people cutting through to get to class and the people that are slow with packing their things. Niall leads Louis down to one of the far tables and lets him go before walking around to the other side of the table and sitting on the bench. Louis follows suit, tucking one leg under himself.

The second bell rings and the halls grow significantly quieter, one teacher up the near stairwell slamming the door and another’s nasal, grating voice carrying down. The odd person rushes past, trying to get to class before they’ll be punished for tardiness. Louis watches Zayn pass, a McDonald’s drink in his hand as he walks alongside a small blonde girl who tosses out a greasy bag. He waves and smiles when he sees Louis, continuing to walk with her.

“So you’re okay?” Niall asks, setting his binder on the table and opening it.

Louis nods, eyes still glued to Zayn and the blonde girl. “Are they… dating?” He asks, turning back to Niall as they turn a corner.

“Who? Zayn and Perrie? No, god no,” he chuckles as he flips through the book. “They get that a lot but no, they’re just friends.”

Louis lets out a small, relieved breath and nods again. He remembered them talking earlier about Liam liking Zayn and Louis felt somewhat like he owed it to his new friends to help Liam and Zayn’s relationship progress. 

“Is France nice?” Niall asks after a little while of silence.

“Oui,” Louis says with a nod.

“Ah, cool. The French classes took a trip to France last year. It looked like fun.”

“Yes, my school does it too. But going to England.”

Niall nods. “Did you go?”

“No,” Louis shakes his head. He remembers that a few of his friends were going and how fun they’d made it out to be. He remembers wishing he’d gone, begging his aunt and uncle for money. He remembers he’d consoled himself by finally asking Eleanor out.

The conversation dwindles and once Niall is sure that Louis is calm, he begins the tour of the school. He shows him the gyms and where the office is, shows him where the computer labs are and he shows him the English and history hall. He guides him down the math and science section, making sure to point out classrooms that he’d be in at some point. He shows him around the language hall which Louis is fairly familiar with and then down to the theatre block. It turns out that there was much more than a stark white hall, a row of music stands and a gorgeous theatre in the room. There’s an entire backstage area he missed with a male and female dressing room and a scene shop. And a plain grey door leads back to a guitar room. And just adjacent to the theatre is a music room where the choir and the band rehearse.

Louis follows Niall through all of it, looking around at the places and trying to fit the looks of classrooms to the numbers provided on his small spreadsheet. He listens to Niall as well, listening to his little stories that he tells as they walk.

“Right there,” he says, pointing to a spot on the floor right where the lockers meet the floor, “is where I had my first kiss. Her name was Amelia and she had braces at the time and one of the brackets cut my lip. Not badly, or anything. But enough to bleed and hurt a tad.”

Louis laughs, not really knowing what he was saying but seeing the look of expectation on his face, hoping for a reaction. Niall goes on, telling stories about how a boy whose locker was right there last year got busted for possession of weed and how the teacher that used to teach in that room married some model and never came back. And Louis listens to him, forcing himself to pick up on the English words and the correct pronunciation instead of tuning him out and learning where the hell he has to go to get to his next class.

When the bell does ring, Niall wishes Louis well and disappears into the growing crowd of students heading to class. He takes a deep breath, finding the chemistry class room. Luckily Zayn is already there, sitting at one of the tables near the window and hunched over his sketch. Louis takes a seat next to him, peering once again at the sketch which seems to be of a pack of wolves in human clothing, growling and snarling.

Zayn flips the notebook shut, smiling over at Louis. “How’s your first day of school in England been?” He asks.

“Eh.. Well,” Louis stammers out, twirling his pen in his fingers to ward off any lingering anxiety from getting lost earlier.

“That’s good,” Zayn smiles at him again.

Louis nods, glancing at the clock to see he had another few minutes to waste before the second bell rings. He looks over at the door as well, wondering if there would be anyone else he knew in the class. As if on cue, Harry ducks into the room, easily carrying a binder, pencil case and a water bottle in one hand. He spots Louis, grinning brightly at him and sitting down next to him. 

“How was last block?” He asks, sending Zayn a small wave. 

“Good,” Louis says with a smile, opening his binder to a blank sheet of paper.

“Did Niall harass you much?” 

Louis looks at him, fearing he was misunderstanding. 

Harry grins that easy grin once again. “Was Niall mean to you?” He amends.

“No, he is very nice,” Louis smiles.

Harry nods and smiles, peering over at Zayn. “What are you drawing?”

Zayn shrugs, pencil still moving over the paper. “Stuff, I guess,” he mumbles. There’s a bit of tenseness in his shoulders and he’s taken on a somewhat shy mood, so different from the boy he laughed with in acting class that morning.

“I’m sure it’ll turn out great.”

“Thanks.”

The table falls silent for a moment, idle conversations taking place around him before the second bell rings. The teacher hands out sheets and, as was becoming a formula for that day, talks about what they’ll be learning that year and quizzes the students. He also takes roll-call and mispronounces Louis’s name but quickly apologizes and pronounces his name correctly. 

The class goes well but for the most part is uneventful and boring at points. The teacher is funny and Louis laughs along with the other students even though he doesn’t really understand his jokes all too well. He goes along with the class and finds that the work looks like it won’t be as hard as some of his other courses will be. 

When the final bell rings, Louis is able to take a deep breath. He made it through his first day of school in a foreign country and he’s proud of himself. He’s not run away and he’s not had any major meltdowns and he actually managed to find some people that he’s tentative to call friends. He finds himself amazed at how quickly the day has passed and how all of his classes are, for the most part, fun.

Harry smiles at him as he collects his books. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” He asks, a hint of nervousness buried in his voice.

“Oui, bien sûr,” Louis says with a grin, stuffing his books into his bag and glancing at the time. According to the transit website he’d taken a look at last night, he had five minutes before the last bell rung to get outside to the bus stop or face being home at least twenty minutes later and his estimated time to be home is already twenty to four.

Harry cocks his head, a questioning look on his face. “I’ll meet you at your locker,” he says, raising a hand as he begins walking away.

Louis nods, shouldering his bag and heading out to the bus stop.

A small crowd of teenagers begins to congregate around the pole in the late summer sun. They’re all speaking to each other and Louis stands off to the side, twiddling his bus card in his hand and waiting for it.

The girls from earlier come up behind him, Munisha laughing loudly and obnoxiously. Louis’s mood darkens from pride to annoyance as he hears her. She’s on both his buses and he has to deal with her irritating laugh for the remainder of the year. He has to deal with her gossip and the skirts she wears and the way she talks too loud.

The reminder that he can go back to France at the end of the year calms him as the bus pulls up. At the end of this year, he will have graduated high school and he can go back to France and study acting in the comfort of his own culture as he always planned when he was younger. Unless something else happens before the end of this year, that’s his plan. He doesn’t want to stay with his mum as much as that might hurt her. He doesn’t want to stay with his sisters either.

Louis’s earlier feeling of pride is completely demolished on the way home. The people around him are too loud and his iPod dies halfway through the ride, leaving him to endure the hot sun gleaming through the window and onto his black-clad legs and the vapid conversations around him that all hold the same whiny tone. He gets too hot and annoyed within the span of a few seconds.

When he finally gets off the bus, he remembers the ten minute walk home and stuffs his hands into his pockets, trying to remember the streets he’d probably walked down a million times over the summer. The streets are silent, all the children that go to the nearby primary school already at home. His feet make a hollow noise against the pavement as he walks, still relatively unharmed from a small amount of uses. They’re the shoes mum bought him as replacement for the ones his sisters drowned in the ocean. 

The shoes felt like cheap compensation for everything that mum was putting him through. They seemed like they were a small way of Jay telling Louis that she was sorry but instead of coming out and saying it aloud, she went the roundabout way and she gave him shoes that would probably be ruined in a year. 

Louis gets home after a ten minute walk from the bus stop. Much to his chagrin, he forgot the key that mum handed him when he first began going for walks. The door is locked and so he stands, knocking in the just slightly unpleasant heat of outside, longing to get upstairs to his room and change into shorts. As he waits, he thinks that at least he’s in the shade and at least his day went well and at least he only has to take the bus after school and so far hasn’t found Munisha in any of his classes.

Lottie answers the door, smiling a little. Her smile absolutely drops from her face when she sees Louis and she rolls her eyes, turning around and heading back up the stairs. Louis steps into the blessed cool of the house, toeing out of his shoes and shutting the door. 

“The frog is home,” Lottie says upstairs, whiny voice carrying down the steps.

He rolls his eyes, shifting his backpack on his shoulder and trudging up the stairs.

“Charlotte, he’s your brother. At least be civil and don’t call him names,” mum scolds.

Louis appears in the landing, facing a family portrait on the wall. All of his sisters are present, smiling pleasantly at the camera. Mum is there too, along with Louis’s stepfather Mark who’s currently off on business in India or some other exotic and foreign place.

“Oh, hello Louis,” mum says, smiling at him. She has one of the twins on her lap and Louis thinks it might be Daisy. “Good day at school?”

He nods mutely, forcing a wide smile at her before heading down the hall and flopping down onto his bed after shutting the door behind him. He tosses his backpack down and it lands with a loud flop on the floor, probably scaring anyone that’s downstairs. He takes out his phone, glancing at the time. Eleanor would be home by now but she’d probably be eating dinner with the time difference between them.

Louis curls onto his side, shutting his eyes and trying not to fall asleep from how early he woke this morning and how busy and frantic his day was. He sighs, opening his eyes to look at the blank door in front of him. Moving here has been really, really hard. He hasn’t spoken to Alex in a week and he hasn’t held Eleanor’s hand since he left. He’s only spoken to Aunt Marie and Uncle Robert on the weekends and he fears that soon the space between calls will get longer like it happened with mum. He doesn’t want to lose the only good relationship he’s had with parental figures.

It’s about an hour and fifteen minutes later of Louis stumbling through some English book when there’s a hard knock on his door. He grunts, permitting entrance, and Fizzy’s face pokes around the jamb. Out of all of his sisters, she’s the least hostile and even seems to like him a little bit. The only thing that stops her from being genuinely nice is Lottie’s reign over her. 

“Dinner’s nearly ready,” she says softly, watching him. Normally Lottie would’ve hissed at him.

“Merci,” he says, setting his book down and sitting up.

“How… how would you say ‘dinner is ready’ in French?” 

Louis smiles at her. “Le dîner est prêt,” he translates, speaking slower than he normally would.

She repeats it back to him, British accent making the words sound silly. She grins when Louis nods and smiles again, wider. She surges forward, probably going to hug him but stops herself and looks away. 

“It sounded dumb,” she whispers, not a lot of conviction behind her words as she flees downstairs to the kitchen.

Louis sighs, walking after her and taking a seat at the table. 

Dinner that night is disastrous. Mum made soup and rolls and Louis got one roll before Lottie stole the rest of them, not even finishing the last two but taking bites out of them. And when Louis asked for the salt – politely – her hand ‘slipped’ and she dropped it straight into his bowl, splattering his shirt with broth and cracking the lid of the shaker which poured into his meal. He glares at her and mum frowns in disapproval but nothing else is said.

“How was school, Louis?” Mum asks as she begins clearing the table.

“Good,” Louis replies. “Thank you.” He stands up and starts for the stairs.

“Lou,” mum says, stopping him.

He turns back around. “Oui?” He doesn’t exactly like the nickname but it’s better than some stupid pet name like she calls the twins.

“Don’t mind Lottie, okay? She’s having a hard time getting used to this. She’s just jealous.”

Louis nods, taking a step towards her and kissing her cheek. He’s getting better at being affectionate and she’s responding well to it, offering to help him with translations and whatnot. And he’s finding that her affection isn’t making him cringe anymore, which is nice.

“Just wait and in a few months, she’ll love you,” mum smiles. 

He nods again. “Bon soir.”

“Goodnight, love.”

 

Getting to school the next day is kind of miserable. Thankfully, Munisha and her puppyish friend are not on the bus today and are not talking loudly about everything and anything they can think of at five to eight in the morning. However, it’s raining and that’s depressing enough. But it also causes his bus to be late and so he has to stand in the rain, under a shelter with a man in an ugly three-piece suit that’s eating an Egg McMuffin quite loudly. 

When he gets to school, he notices the squeaking of everyone’s shoes on the floor and he knows that the sound will persist through the day. He heads to his locker, checking his schedule and seeing that he has English, history, math and peer tutoring for one of Mme Chen’s grade nine blocks. He’s not very excited for most of his classes but the peer tutoring sounds fun and Mme Chen is one of those teachers that would let him just sit around and get him to buy her food from the cafeteria.

Zayn is at his locker again, almost hiding behind his locker door as he plays with his phone. Louis peers over, trying to catch a glimpse of the screen. Zayn notices him at once and shuts the screen off, slipping his phone back into his pocket. 

“Ooh,” Louis teases, smiling because he’s in the presence of a friend now. “Who?”

Zayn shakes his head, pink patches on his cheeks. “No one,” he says with a quiet chuckle.

He laughs, rolling his eyes. “Bien sûr,” he drawls, sarcasm dripping off the syllables

Someone approaches him from behind and Louis turns, seeing Harry standing there with a smile on his face. Louis grins, taking in his outfit. Today Harry’s dressed in a Rolling Stones t-shirt and black skinny jeans, a hoodie’s open zip displaying the shirt. His hair has a few wet chunks in it but looks for the most part quite dry.

“Good morning,” he says, nodding at Zayn.

Zayn raises a hand in greeting, smiling timidly.

“Eh, good morning,” Louis repeats, knowing that mum told him that every morning when she saw him and added a little kiss on the end. 

“Do you want to eat lunch with us again?” Harry asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. (Louis isn’t quite sure how, really, because the jeans seem to be plastered onto his legs and he’s not sure if Harry could even fit a piece of paper between them.)

Louis glances at Zayn, who’s occupied on his phone again but looks up when Harry speaks.

“Both of you,” Harry says, grin widening. 

“Oui, merci,” Louis smiles.

Zayn nods, looking a little stiff and nervous. “Yeah, that sounds great, thanks.”

Harry and Louis exchange a look, both of them grinning.

 

Louis’s first class is English and he hates it. The first thing that happens is that his teacher, Mrs. Bartlett, is late. She arrives with bags and binders in her arms and a travel mug clutched precariously in her hand. She struggles to unlock the door and once the students are inside, she puts up an assigned seating plan. Louis’s second problem is that he doesn’t know anyone in the class. Not a single face is familiar to him as he takes a seat in a group of four desks that’s piled together. He’s facing the back wall, not the board or where it looks like his teacher will be dictating.

His biggest problem is the class itself. The only thing they do today is go over the course like he’s done so many times before and listen to Mrs. Bartlett talking and handing out ‘student expectation contracts’, which she asks be signed by the students and their parents or guardians. But the class talks over her, beginning in whispers. The girls lean over their tables, giggling with each other and showing them their phones. The boys just tell their stories in whispers, mischievous grins on their faces. But then they begin to talk over each other and eventually, they’re all talking at regular volumes and completely ignoring Mrs. Bartlett.

It also turns out that Mrs. Bartlett is a shitty teacher. She can’t control the class and she just stands at the front of the class, waiting for the class to quiet. Eventually, she tells them to please not speak so loudly and at least wait until between classes. It doesn’t really work at all.

When they have five minutes left before the end of class, Louis sits alone at his table, looking around the room. He watches people laughing together, sharing stories and speaking about how their summers went. And he realizes that one of the main reasons he hates this class is because he’s lonely. There are three other quiet kids; a ginger that’s got his nose buried in a book, a girl with her black hair falling down her back in a ponytail and a girl in clothes that are too small for her sketching in a notebook. But he doesn’t particularly fancy speaking to any of them, especially with less than five minutes left in the class.

He wants to be woven into the social fabric like he was at his old school, sporting a large amount of friends and having people to party with. He doesn’t like this sudden isolation and thick language barrier and he doesn’t like being seen as the new quiet kid by his peers. He isn’t quiet, he isn’t quiet at all. He’s loud and boisterous and he was the life of the party back in France and the only person he was ever really quiet around was Eleanor. 

The bell rings and Louis heads to Mme Chen’s class once more. He has peer tutoring this block and he’s excited for it because he not only adores Mme Chen already but he knows that this class will be easy and he’ll have fun.

Louis does have fun that class. The kids in that block are learning the basics of French and today they worked on the alphabet and numbers and they played a game near the end of the class. He didn’t understand their taunts to each other which sent the Anglophones into hysterics but he was able to laugh at a few of the things Mme Chen said as well as the kids rushing forward. 

Lunch rolls around and Louis grabs his packed lunch from his locker before heading to the alcove that he’s starting to really like. He sees that Zayn is already there, tucked away and leaning against the elevator door while the others are dispersed over the floor just like yesterday. Louis takes a seat next to Harry, noticing the way Liam is much quieter today.

Liam coughs awkwardly. “Football tryouts are tomorrow,” he says, lifting another crisp to his mouth. “And rugby is on Thursday.”

“You gunna do both this year?” Niall asks before shovelling more spaghetti into his mouth. 

Louis begins his eating another dry turkey sandwich, watching their interaction.

Liam nods. “Hopefully. And I’m doing track again, definitely.”

“I thought you were auditioning for the play this year. I heard it’s a musical,” Harry says, watching Liam.

“Nah,” Liam says, shaking his head. “I’m a shower singer and that’s it.”

Zayn looks up at the mention of the play, surveying the three of them. Louis glances over at him.

“I think Zayn will, uhm, auditioning,” Louis interjects, grinning mischievously at Zayn.

“Oh, really?” Liam says, looking at him. His voice has a hint of breathlessness to it. “You know, if the play is like, Grease or something, you’d make a fantastic Danny Zuko.”

Zayn’s cheeks light up with the smallest of pink patches. “Uh, yeah, thanks. I’ve heard talk of it being Footloose, though.”

“Oh, well, then you’ve got to go for Chuck. You just have like, a greaser look to you that’d be perfect. But I’m sure you could get Ren or Willard.”

“Thank you,” Zayn says softly, smiling sincerely at Liam.

Niall and Harry exchange a look and they both cackle. Harry looks over at Louis as both Zayn and Liam turn back to their meals. He leans into his ear, cupping a hand over his mouth.

“That was really good,” he whispers. “Thanks.”

Louis smiles over at him, ignoring the way his hand brushed over his cheek a little. 

The end of lunch is nearing and Liam, as he did yesterday too, is already beginning to pack his things up. Harry looks over at Louis, a little bit of nervousness sitting in his eyes when he watches him. He looks around for something and tosses a Ziploc bag of trash into the bin, sitting back beside him.

“Can I see your phone?” He asks, bringing his own out. 

Louis nods, pulling his phone out of his pocket and holding it since he can’t really understand Harry very well. Harry reaches for it, eyes watching him and asking for his permission which Louis grants when he hands it over. Harry pushes the screen on, recoiling just a little and Louis looks over, seeing a picture of himself and Eleanor as his phone background.

“Is that your girlfriend?” Harry asks, tapping and adding his number into Louis’s contacts.

“Oui,” Louis nods. 

Harry nods, handing Louis his phone back along with his own. “Add your number,” he says. 

Louis types in his number, handing it back to him as the bell rings. He smiles when Harry promises to text him later and heads off to his next class. 

His next class is math and he quickly decides he hates it too. Munisha is in his class, sitting in the back and eating her lunch loudly as their teacher hands out a white sheet gridded with some squares. The squares are labelled with English words at the top and Louis is struggling to make them out as the teacher tells them to stand up and go around the room, asking people if they did any of these things.

Louis stays where he is, confused. He brings out of his phone to translate the words, tapping a few of them in until the teacher comes up to him and asks him to put his phone away. He tries explaining but the words don’t come to him. He’s told to join the crowd of people all standing around and speaking to one another, loud and English. 

Munisha approaches, wearing shorts like Eleanor does along with a short shirt. The outfit is so similar to something Eleanor might wear that Louis is caught off guard at how unattractive he finds it. With her boisterous voice matched with his girlfriend’s clothes, he feels mildly sickened.

“Have you taken a plane this summer?” She asks in a loud voice, smiling at him and showing off straight white teeth. 

Louis recognizes the word ‘plane’ and ‘summer’ immediately. He nods mutely, watching her thrust a paper and pen towards him, point at one of the boxes and ask him to write his name. He does and she takes the paper and pen back, examining his name under the box.

“Louis?” She asks, pronouncing the ‘s’ like so many other people have done.

“Louis,” he corrects.

“Where are you from?” 

“Uh, France.”

“Oh, wow. Are you an international student?”

Louis shakes his head, wanting her to leave and badger someone else about their nationality and their reason for being in England.

“Oh, so did you move here?”

He nods, knowing that he’d just say ‘oui’ if he spoke and then he’d look stupid. 

“That’s really cool,” Munisha says in a monotonous voice. She doesn’t sound like she really cares about why he’s in England and is only finding out for the sake of knowing and having this knowledge over the new kid.

Blessedly, Munisha leaves a few minutes later after receiving no response from Louis. He tries mulling about with other people but he just feels so shy, something that he’s really not. He doesn’t want to embarrass himself and he doesn’t want to seem stupid in front of his peers so he really just hangs around the edges of the group, signing things and getting his signed when people approach. 

Soon they return to their seats and their teacher, Mr. White, collects their papers and goes about doing the course expectations talk that they’ve had with every other teacher. The course is dull and they do a little bit of basic algebra (which is easy for Louis because he knows his English numbers and the symbols for them are all the same in both languages). 

His next class is history, something he’s been dreading. So much of history is reading comprehension expressed in writing and his English writing is poor at best. Another large chunk of it is just the teacher lecturing the class and his listening abilities aren’t really the best either. He’s loved the course expectations thing in this first week of classes because it means that he gets to not listen and just take the sheet from them and type it into Google translate when he gets home from school. 

The history teacher thankfully follows every other teacher’s example and talks about what they’ll be learning this year. Louis doesn’t listen, doodling on some paper as he sits next to Liam, who’s listening intently and jotting down notes on the pink sheet he was given. He really doesn’t like the teacher, who seems to use big words because Liam keeps penning words down in the margins of his paper and using a dictionary app to define them. 

When Louis gets home later that day, he texts Eleanor for a while and eats dinner before Skyping with her until she has to go to bed. He smiles a little, mood improved after speaking to her. He showers and starts getting ready for bed when his phone vibrates. His heart skips a beat because maybe it’s Eleanor, unable to sleep and texting him like she used to when she couldn’t sleep. They’d call each other, lie under the blankets and whisper until Louis sang her to sleep. 

He can’t say that his heart sinks when he sees it’s Harry texting him though. 

_Hey :)_ the text reads.

_Hey_ Louis sends back, lying down in bed and taking a sip of tea. Whenever he couldn’t sleep, he’d call Eleanor. She wouldn’t sing to him, just prompt him to make tea and lie down. And she’d talk to him about everything, tell him stories until he passed out. 

_How are you?_ Harry replies a few minutes later

_I’m good, thank you. And you?_ Louis would be lying if he said he didn’t have his translate app open.

_Good, thanks. Soo, tell me about your girlfriend?_

Louis laughs a little. _Her name is Eleanor. She has the same age as me. She’s beautiful._

_Aw, that’s really sweet. She’s back in France, I’m guessing?_

_Yes, sadly. :(_

It takes Harry a minute longer to respond. _I’m sorry. :( You two look very happy together._

_Thank you. Do you have a girlfriend?_

_Haha! No, I don’t. I’ve never dated a girl._ (Louis can picture Harry laughing at his question, eyes all alight with mirth and barking out that laugh as he does. It’s a nice image.)

_Why?_

_Uhm, don’t hate me or anything, but I’m gay._

Louis has to run that through his translate app, understanding very little. When he reads the translation, he pauses a little. Harry, who he thought must be a heartthrob, is gay. 

_I don’t hate you. You’re my friend :)_

_Thank you_

The conversation ends soon after that, the both of them needing to go to bed in preparation for the early day they both have. Louis fails to mention to Harry that he’s also not straight, that he’s bisexual and that his discovery of his sexuality came from cheating on Eleanor at a house party. But he puts it down to the fact he’s just met Harry and they’re friends but they’re not close enough yet. He likes Harry and he thinks that their friendship will progress but he doesn’t want to tell him about the follies of his personal life just yet. He’s actually closer to Zayn than he is to Harry currently, with the things he told Zayn.

Louis finishes his tea, cuddling down into the blankets and falling asleep soon after.

 

A month passes and October is upon them, freezing and hellish in the mornings and not much better in the afternoons. It doesn’t snow – yet – but the rain is absolutely awful and there’s wind too. Louis is late for school about three times because the rain made his bus late or the rain made him too sad to wake up just yet. 

Louis’s courses have gotten much harder. He’s doing perfectly in French and peer tutoring but he’s only doing ‘satisfactory’ in the brunt of his courses. English and history are his two worst since they involve so much reading and writing and so many words that he doesn’t know and couldn’t even pretend to. The marks still make mum happy but she still tells him to try his hardest and he really is. 

The play has also been announced as Grease and auditions were held last week. Zayn doesn’t get Danny Zuko as Liam predicted but he does get Kenickie which is a good role. Louis gets an ensemble role, which is good for him. He’d rather be back at his old school, playing the lead because he can act and he can sing and he can dance but he couldn’t play a speaking role. He specifically asked not to play a speaking role because he knew that he’d be too conscious of the pronunciation of the words to properly project them and he knew that it would take him so long to memorize the lines. Mrs. Salt asks if he’s sure he wants an ensemble role because his cold read went very well and so did his singing audition. She tells him he has the talent to play someone like Putzie but Louis refuses.

And Louis’s home life hasn’t improved at all. His sisters still hate him except Fizzy who seems to secretly like him. Sometimes she’ll sneak up to his room and she’ll ask him about France. She asks him to speak in French so that she can learn how the words feel because she’s not old enough to take French yet. Apart from that, Louis and Eleanor have hit a rough patch. They’re both frustrated about the lack of touching and face to face contact and they both hate the distance. When they fight, Eleanor asks him if he wants to break up and he tells her he doesn’t know. She hangs up on him and now he’s unsure of whether or not they’re together.

Louis has also woven into Harry’s group along with Zayn. They all eat lunch together, walk to classes together and Louis is glad that he’s found four friends because he wasn’t sure he’d find any. One thing he’s finding nice is that Zayn and Liam are obviously all over each other and they went on their first date last week. Something he finds odd is how he hasn’t stopped thinking Harry’s attractive yet. Usually when he makes a new friend, he thinks they’re cute for a day or two and then they fade into the realm of brother. But really, he might not mind kissing Harry at least once, to see what those lips feel like against his.

Rehearsals are slotted for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays if they need more work on something. Today is a Wednesday and Louis and Zayn just got out from a mainly dancing rehearsal. They’re both sweaty and Zayn walks off towards the front doors of the school immediately, going to catch a ride from his dad. Louis heads into the library, needing some time to adjust to room temperature before stepping into the frigid mid-October air. He also knows that the next bus isn’t for another half hour and why wait outside?

He steps into the library, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair as he looks for something to do. There are computers and he could go on Facebook and talk to Alex, maybe Eleanor too. There are books and he could sit and read for a bit. He’s looking around when he sees Harry sat at one of the round tables, hunched over some paper and looking frustrated. He takes a seat next to him, knowing he stinks of sweat and not really caring.

“Are you okay?” Louis asks.

Harry looks over, a smile immediately spreading over his face. “Hey, Lou,” he says, sitting back. “I’m just frustrated.”

“Why?” 

“We have a vocab test tomorrow in French and I don’t know any of it. Zayn offered to help but…”

“Can I help?” Louis asks, watching him.

Harry smiles a little wider. “Sure. How can I repay you?”

That one takes Louis a second. His English has improved greatly over the past month but he still has trouble more often than not.

“Uh, help me with English?” Louis suggests.

Harry nods. “That sounds perfect,” he says. “We’ll be each other’s tutors.”

Louis nods, smiling. They set up a schedule for Fridays and Saturdays to tutor and Louis suggests that they use Harry’s house more often than not. He knows his sisters will make fun of him if he has Harry around and he knows that he doesn’t want them poking in his business.

Once the schedule is saved in their phones, Louis helps Harry with the vocabulary sheet, helping him memorize the words and prompting him to spell them. By the end of an hour, Harry is sure that he’ll at least pass the test and he thanks Louis profusely, pulling him in for a hug. Louis hugs him back, liking that his head only came up to Harry’s chin and liking that Harry was still willing to hug him when he was sweat-sticky and smelled horrible. 

When he pulls away, he glances at the clock and swears. He’s missed his bus by now and the busses run hourly. It’s another half hour until the next one and the next one takes a longer route and he’s starting to get hungry and cold.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, casting a concerned look over at him as he packs away his binder and pens.

“I… I am too late for a bus,” he sighs.

“Oh, well, my mum is probably home from work by now. Do you want to come over to my place? We’ll give you a ride.”

Louis pauses at that one too. When he figures it out, he shakes his head. “No, thank you. I will wait.”

“No, I insist. We live about a block away and it’s like, the coldest day of the month. Please?”

He hesitates again. The ride home from Harry’s mum sounds tempting and it’s a lot better than waiting in the rain for a bus for a half hour with the one thin sweater he brought today. An added bonus is that he’ll figure out where Harry lives ahead of their tutoring session and he won’t have to worry too much about getting lost. But he really, really doesn’t want to be a bother and he really doesn’t want to put Harry or his mum out. 

“Okay,” he whispers after a minute or two. “Merci beaucoup. Vraiment.”

Harry smiles, shouldering his bag. “Just follow me.”

Louis does as he’s told, wrapping his sweater around himself and following Harry out of the school. Outside is freezing as they step out of the heated comfort of the school and head up the street. They take the second right and walk for about two minutes before Harry turns into a driveway. A silver sedan is parked in the driveway and the garden that sits in front of the small bungalow is half dead from the cold and from how much it’s been raining

Harry pulls a set of keys out of his backpack and opens the door, bringing Louis in. The inside of the house is warm and Louis feels his goosebumps disappearing as he stands in the foyer. Harry leaves his shoes on and Louis notes the small shoe mat that they have there, everything from runners to flats to a pair of heels sitting on it. 

“Mum!” Harry calls, setting his bag down beside the shoe mat. 

“Yes, love?” A woman’s voice calls back.

“Can you give my friend Louis a ride home? He missed a bus and it’s a long wait till the next one. Please?”

“Your friend Louis? The one from France? Of course. I’ll be down in a shake.”

Harry turns and smiles at Louis. “Told you she’d do it,” he says.

“Thank you,” Louis says, smiling from Harry’s smile. 

“Anytime, Lou.”

A moment later, Anne comes downstairs. She’s wearing jeans and a white blouse, her hair back in a ponytail and a smile on her face. She’s a little shorter than Louis but not much and she hugs him tightly when she gets to him. She smells like perfume and Louis is immediately conscious of how he must smell. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Louis,” she says as she reaches for her coat and shoes. “Harry has told us so much about you.”

Harry turns a light shade of pink and Louis laughs. “Yes?” He inquires, Harry’s reaction spurring him on to prompt her.

“Oh, yes,” she nods, slipping into a pair of runners. “He told us about how you’re from France and how that’s so cool and how you like acting and you’re in Grease this year. He even asked me to get his sister down to come and see it with us.”

Louis laughs again, not understanding very much of what she’s saying. She laces up her shoes and leads them outside, unlocking the sedan. Harry climbs into the back and Louis follows, unsure of how Harry is actually comfortable when he’s cramped with no legroom. 

The car is started and Harry’s mum introduces herself as Anne. She chats through the drive to Louis’s house and Louis directs her to it, praising himself for knowing his directions in English. When she pulls up to his house ten minutes later, it’s raining and Harry smiles at him, telling him to have a good night. Louis thanks Anne and Harry profusely, waving and smiling as he crosses the driveway to get to the door. He steps inside a moment later and the smell of spaghetti hangs in the air.

He calls out a hello, toes his shoes off and goes upstairs to get some deodorant on to mask how disgusting he smells and change out of his t-shirt and shorts. He quickly changes into sweatpants and a different t-shirt before heading downstairs to the kitchen in hopes that dinner is already served. 

Mum is standing at the sink, washing out the cast iron pan that she makes spaghetti sauce in. There’s a plate of spaghetti on the table at Louis’s place and he can hear the girls in the next room, watching TV and playing together. She turns and looks at Louis, immediately rinsing her hands under the running water before shutting it off.

“Where were you?” She asks, voice stern.

“Grease,” he says, kissing her cheek before sitting down.

“Rehearsals end at five, Louis. It’s nearly seven now. Where were you?”

“I was late for the bus.”

“What were you doing?”

Louis is taken aback by how stern she is, by how upset she is over him missing a bus and helping Harry with his homework. “I helped study Harry.”

She shakes her head. “What were you doing for the hour after rehearsals got out, Louis?”

“I was in the library, with Harry…”

“Who’s Harry?”

“My friend.”

“Louis, if you don’t tell me the truth, I will pull you out of that play and ground you.”

“It is truth.” 

“If this happens again, I’m grounding you, Louis.” 

He nods, staying silent in his confusion. He doesn’t understand why she’s so worried that he was home late. It isn’t until he’s lying in bed that night that he realizes she’s scared that he might turn out like she did.

 

On Friday, Louis walks home with Harry. They haven’t gotten the results of their French test back yet but Harry is sure that he at least didn’t fail. Louis feels proud of himself for giving Harry at least some confidence in the class.

They’re walking towards Harry’s house, the taller boy having his hands stuffed in his pockets. Louis has his hands pushed into his hoodie pouch because England is cold and France gets cold too but England is by far worse. And mum hasn’t bought him a coat yet even though the girls all got new jackets. They cross the road and head into Harry’s empty house.

“Mum works till five and Robin, my stepdad, is in Ireland for business,” Harry explains as he toes out of his shoes.

Louis nods. “Tell me your family _en français_ ,” he says, following him into the kitchen.

“Uhm… J’ai un mère, un step-père,” Harry pauses to chuckle as he starts making tea. “Et un sœur.”

Louis laughs, taking a seat at the table. “Beau-père,” he corrects, chuckling.

“What? Uh… Isn’t that handsome father?” He asks, looking over at Louis confused.

“No, no, it is… it is stepfather.”

“Oh, okay,” Harry nods. “Do you want tea?” 

Louis nods. “Oui, merci.”

Harry reaches up into the cupboard, shirt riding up a little to expose a piece of his pale hip and his boxers. Louis notes, unintentionally, that Harry’s pants are drooping down and showing the convex curve where his bum begins. 

“What kind?” Harry asks, snapping Louis’s eyes away from his hips and back up to his face. “We have green tea, Orange Pekoe, Earl Grey… Uh, there’s some Ginseng there… Decaf…”

"Je ne sais pas,” Louis shrugs. 

Harry shrugs as well. “I’m having Earl Grey. Do you want it too?”

Louis nods. “Merci.”

Harry smiles, making them both tea before sitting next to him. They sip at their tea while Louis teaches Harry the difference between past participle verbs used with _être_ and past participle verbs used with _avoir_. He teaches him the difference between _une baleine_ and _un bâtiment_. He coaches his pronunciation and smiles when Harry stumbles his way through a sentence, stuttering but pronouncing everything correctly and using the right tenses. 

Once Louis feels Harry is sufficiently tutored, Harry begins to teach him things in English. Harry teaches him about prepositions and adjectives and adverbs. He also coaches on pronunciation and Louis is shocked at how careful and gentle he is with his words. He’s a much better coach than Louis, always watching him and correcting him but telling him it was better this time. 

This continues but soon they forget tutoring. They move into the living room, sitting close that Louis’s knee is pushed against Harry’s thigh but neither of them seem to mind very much. They chat and Louis finds himself laughing as he understands what Harry is saying and when he gets the jokes. And he finds that this feels normal, it feels natural and it feels like he’s back home with Alex and Eleanor and Aimee and Jean-Luc. But it’s different because there’s just a whole different level of comfort when he’s sitting on Harry’s couch, drinking his tea and nearly cuddling with him.

It’s not that he wasn’t comfortable back home but it was that there was always some bit of drama within the group. Maybe Aimee’s mother and father were getting a divorce or maybe Jean-Luc’s girlfriend cheated on him with the cigarette-smoking jock. But Harry isn’t like that and neither are his friends. None of them really date (except Zayn and Liam with each other) and he’s sure that there is some drama buried deep within them judging by how protective Niall and Liam are of Harry but it’s never brought up. It’s never dissected amongst the entire group and spoken of for days and that’s a whole new level of comfort Louis’s never known before.

Everything is perfect until Louis’s phone buzzes. He checks and sees that it’s mum, telling him that he should start getting home now. He sighs, leaning over and laying his head on Harry’s shoulder. He doesn’t want to leave. Harry’s is nice. It’s calm and his mum is wonderful and there aren’t four little girls shrieking all the time and teasing him and mum isn’t constantly breathing down his neck.

Harry’s arm wraps around his shoulders, pulling him closer and Louis loves it. He sighs, shutting his eyes and deciding to ignore the message for a few minutes because he really doesn’t want to go home yet, especially not now that he’s found how comfortable Harry’s arm is. 

“Your mum?” Harry asks, breaking the silence.

Louis nods, arms wrapping around his waist. 

“My mum will be home shortly. She can give you a ride.”

Louis shakes his head, really not wanting to impose twice in one week.

“C’mon, Lou. She loves you.”

He shakes his head again. 

“I’ll walk you to the bus stop, then.”

He nods, pulling him in tighter and really not wanting to let go.

“We’d better hurry. The next bus is in ten minutes.”

Louis pulls away, pouting at Harry. He sighs dramatically, standing up and heading to grab his backpack and his shoes. Harry follows suit, handing Louis a scarf. Louis holds it in his hand, looking up at Harry slightly confused. He reaches up, beginning to wrap it around Harry’s neck when the curly boy stops him. His large hands pull the scarf out of Louis’s grasp and he laughs.

“No, Lou, it’s for you,” he explains. “It’s freezing outside and all you have is that sweater.”

Louis reaches for it again, willing to wear it because there are like, four other scarves on the hangers and about a million hats. Harry doesn’t give it to him, instead opting to reach forward himself and tie it around Louis’s neck like the parent of a small child. He grins down at him, his eyes sparkling with mirth and something softer.

There’s a moment when he’s done tying it and Louis’s eyes drift up from where his hands are still clutching the warm fabric of the scarf, meeting Harry’s eyes. Tension suddenly rises between them, making Louis feel breathless and a little scared. Out of instinct more than anything, he brings his hands up to rest on Harry’s forearms and when he feels those muscles tightening, he steps back.

“Merci beaucoup,” Louis says, turning and shouldering his bag.

“Uh, you’re welcome,” Harry murmurs, grabbing one of the hats and pulling it down over his hair.

Louis steps out of the house, waiting for Harry on the step before starting down the street with him. He stays silent, enjoying the quiet dripping of rain as they walk down the street. (He also enjoys the feeling of Harry’s scarf around his neck but that’s neither here nor there.)

Not long after they arrive at the bus stop, the bus arrives and Louis and Harry say goodbye to each other for the weekend. Louis boards the bus and gets home not too long later, stepping inside to see mum and Mark both dressed up. Mum is wearing a dress, her hair down and styled neatly along with a full face of makeup. She’s preening in the mirror while Mark pulls on a blazer. Louis pauses in the doorway, completely shocked to see them both looking like this.

“Oh, Louis, good that you’re home,” mum says, smiling sweetly at him as she grabs a pair of heels. “Dinner is cooking on the stove and the girls are playing in the living room. You don’t mind watching them while we go out, do you?”

Louis nods. “Have fun,” he murmurs, unwrapping the scarf from around his neck.

“Serve dinner in about a half hour,” Mark tells him. “We should be home around ten. You have our cell numbers so call if there’s any issues.”

He nods again, smiling when they tell him to have a good night. 

Once again when he heads up to his room, anger rises into his chest like bile. He wonders for the millionth time if maybe he wasn’t brought back to England for mum to have her son with her but for free babysitting. He forces the thought back down, heading downstairs to watch the girls and make sure they don’t get hurt.

When he takes a seat on the couch, he’s reminded once again of what happened with Harry earlier. How they were cuddling on the couch and how Louis nearly pulled him in for a kiss. It’s not like he really wants to kiss Harry because he has a girlfriend and he and Harry are friends, nothing more. They’re good friends and Louis was taken aback by the brown hair and the pretty eyes like Eleanor has.

It’s not even like he really likes boys as much as he likes girls. He is bisexual but he’s realized over the past while that he really isn’t as attracted to boys as he thought he was. He’s more into girls and things about them and most of his crushes on boys have been short-lived and usually platonic, friendship crushes where he craves their companionship instead of their kisses. 

Louis puts it down to Harry’s similarities to Eleanor. Like, she curled her hair more often than not and her hair is often that same shiny brown colour. And both of them have pretty eyes and they’re both quite thin. They could really pass for brother and sister.

“Oi! Frog!” 

He looks up, eyes scanning the room for the outburst. They land on the tallest of the four girls standing a few feet away from him and glaring. He raises his brows in reply.

“Can you go somewhere else? I don’t wanna catch some French sickness or something,” Lottie hisses.

Louis rolls his eyes, bringing his phone out of his pocket and beginning to text Alex.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”

He ignores her, tapping out a reply.

“Listen to me, you freak!” Lottie shrieks. 

Louis looks up, glaring at her but staying where he is.

“God, I hate you! I wish you’d just go back to wherever the hell you came from because you’ve ruined _everything_!”

The words punch a hole in Louis’s chest but he refuses to show it, keeping his gaze fixed on her. 

“I hope you get hit by a car next time you’re out walking…” Lottie mumbles.

And that makes Louis snap, makes him lurch forward and grab her wrist, pulling her in close. “Ecoute, petite salope,” he growls. “Arrêter maintenant. As-tu une idée de comment c’est dur pour moi sans tu être une salope? J’ai quitté ma famille! Ma tante et mon oncle! Ma vraie famille! C’est difficile et tu as ruiné plue pour moi que j’ai pour tu. Je tu déteste!”

Lottie is curled as far away from him as possible, trying to escape. He knows she doesn’t understand but he knows that she understands his biting tone. He also knows that he shouldn’t have snapped like that but he’s more than done with her patronising tone and how she’s constantly trying to bring him down. He knows that the other three, who are shocked into stillness, will most definitely tell on him later and he’ll be in trouble and he won’t have the words to explain that it was justified.

His grip on her wrist loosens and she pulls away, running up to her room in tears. Fizzy follows after her, not glaring at Louis but shying away from him a little. She looks scared. Louis stands, storming into the kitchen and collapsing into one of the chairs.

Needless to say, dinner is the most awkward experience of his life. Only three out of the four girls come to the table, Lottie holing up in her room for the evening. Everyone is deadly silent, apparently scared of Louis after his outburst at Lottie and he hates it. The twins and Fizzy aren’t that bad and he thinks that he could maybe love them as actual sisters one day. But Lottie is the one he can’t stand and Lottie deserved every word he told her. 

And later that night at ten when mum and Mark come home, Louis hears Lottie burst from her room and race downstairs. There’s murmuring downstairs before mum comes up to Louis’s room, a small frown on her face. She doesn’t look as gorgeous and young as she did before but now tired and worn.

Mum scolds Louis, grounds him for the weekend and bids him a curt goodnight before heading into the bathroom and occupying it for the next hour or so. Louis falls back on his bed, hating everything.

 

That weekend is sparsely better. Louis is able to Skype with Eleanor off his phone a few times since mum didn’t think of taking it away. They make up their fight and talk for a while and it lightens the mood but it doesn’t do anything for things offline. Lottie and the rest of the girls ignore him and they don’t glare or make any note of his existence. They don’t speak to him at dinner, instead asking whoever is sitting next to him to pass the salt or the butter. 

Monday is odd. Harry, who Louis spoke to over the weekend a few times, doesn’t come to his locker first thing in the morning like he always does. And Louis has peer tutoring and English so he doesn’t see him until lunchtime. When he approaches the group, he’s fully prepared to sit with the four others and tell them about his weekend and unwind a little with Niall’s dirty jokes and Harry’s jokes that are so horrible you can’t help but laugh.

But when he gets to the group, their regular configuration is replaced with something different. Zayn and Liam aren’t sitting together, fingers laced together or cuddled into each other’s sides. Niall isn’t sitting beside the Roof Access door and Harry isn’t sitting closest to the hallway, his food sitting next to him. Instead, Zayn is standing on the threshold of the corridor and the alcove, looking into it. Niall and Liam are sitting on either side of Harry, whose hands are covering his face. Both of them are speaking in low voices to him, rubbing his back and nodding at things the other said.

Louis’s heart sinks and he opens his mouth to ask what’s going on when Zayn walks over to him, putting a hand on his back and spinning him around before pushing him away from the alcove. Louis resists at first, stammering around asking what’s wrong as Zayn leads him down the hall and down the stairs.

It isn’t until after they arrive at the theatre that Zayn turns and looks at him as he sinks to the floor below a bulletin board advertising the dance class. Louis sits across from him, placing his lunch down beside him and looking at his friend curiously. Zayn pulls and apple out of his bag and takes a bite, chewing and swallowing before speaking.

“Do you have the words to We Go Together?” He asks. 

“Inside my locker,” Louis says, watching him carefully. 

Zayn nods, taking another bite of the apple. “I haven’t learned the words yet.”

“What is wrong with Harry?” 

“He failed a test. He’s fine.”

Louis’s eyes narrow a little as he watches Zayn, completely aware that he’s lying but not knowing how to press.

 

Harry doesn’t know what to do. After Friday, he’s been bursting to tell Niall and Liam but knowing he couldn’t do it over text. So he waits until Monday, a ball of nerves the entire weekend and he’s so anxious to get to lunch that his first two blocks are utter torture. His teachers literally could not talk any slower and time could not move any more sluggishly. And when he got to lunch, Zayn and Liam were already there. He asks Zayn to take Louis somewhere else, tells him that he bombed a test and doesn’t want to cry in front of Louis.

Niall appears beside him as he says he bombed a test and he and Liam exchange a look. They both know what that means and Harry looks down at his legs. The group hasn’t had many additions over the years but they know that when Harry ‘bombs a test’, they have to rid of anyone else in some way or another. 

“What is it?” Liam asks, immediately latching to Harry’s side. Niall wraps his arms around Harry’s middle, holding him close as Liam rubs his back.

“I… I have a crush,” Harry whispers, digging his teeth into his lips. 

“Oh, _Harry_ ,” Liam sighs. His fingers reach up and lace into his curls, massaging it lightly.

“On who?” Niall asks, pressing a kiss to his cheek. 

He takes a deep breath, burying his face into his palms and feeling the clamminess against his cheeks. He’s vaguely aware of Zayn lingering against the wall, watching down the hall for Louis like he’s supposed to. He trusts him not to tell him and hears Louis approach before Zayn leads him away.

“Louis…” Harry whispers.

Both of them draw breath, exchanging a look over Harry’s head. 

“Well, that’s not so bad,” Niall whispers. “He seems like a good lad.”

“You said the same thing about Mike,” Harry mumbles, hands falling away from his face so he could glare at the ground.

Niall and Liam both flinch, both remembering Harry’s ex. 

“Well, Mike was different,” Liam says, a hard edge to his voice. “He’d been expelled from his old school and facing expulsion from here unless he cleaned his act up.”

Harry takes a deep breath, nodding slowly.

“Louis is different, okay? His mum was sick when he was little so he lived in France. He’s not like Mike at all,” Niall assures, watching Harry.

“But… I’ve only known him for like a month and I already want to kiss him and I nearly did…”

“You… you nearly kissed him?” Liam asks, exchanging another look with Niall.

Harry nods. “It was on Friday. We… We’ve started tutoring each other because I was failing French and he’s not so good at English. And so we were kind of cuddling on the couch and then he was asked to come home but he wouldn’t wait for my mum to come home so she could drive him and he was gunna take the bus. And it was freezing on Friday and all he had was a sweater so I lent him a scarf and he tried giving it back to me but I tied it around his neck and when I was done my hands just stayed there near his chest. And then I started leaning forward and I was just staring at his lips and his hands were on my wrists and I swear he was pulling me in b-but he has a girlfriend and I don’t think he’s even gay or anything and…”

Harry doesn’t notice he’s crying until Liam pulls his sleeve down over his hand and wipes at his eyes.

“It’s okay, Haz,” Liam whispers. “You just have a crush and it’s hard when it’s unrequited but you’ll be okay.”

Harry nods, cuddling into the both of them and sniffling. He wasn’t sure if it really was okay and there was a niggle of anxiety in the back of his mind telling him that this would end in disaster. 

 

Louis was allowed to return to lunch the next day. He sent Harry many worried texts, each one run through Google translate because he was too anxious to translate what he wanted to say. He didn’t have any classes, couldn’t see him after school because he had to catch his bus, so he resorted to sending him texts that were probably too intrusive and too many.

_Do you agree? Xx_ (Louis had been trying to ask if he was okay.)

_Everything is good? Xx_

The list went on, getting more and more ridiculous and poorly translated as it went on. Harry didn’t reply immediately, presumably too interested in his class to answer and too busy walking home to take the risk of texting. Louis worried endlessly about all the possibilities that lead Zayn to taking him away from the trio. 

Was Anne all right? Or maybe something had happened to Harry’s sister? He did have a stepfather too so Louis wondered if everything was good there. He wonders if he really was that upset over bombing a test and wanted to know which one. Was it the French one that Louis had prepped him for? He’d feel so guilty if it was his French test because Harry worked so hard and Louis was just a really shitty teacher.

Halfway through Louis’s bus ride home, his phone vibrated from where he had it clamped between his hands. He was listening to music and was eager not to let the jolts from the bus disguise his phone vibrating with what could be a very good or very bad reply to his earlier questions.

_Yeah, I’m fine, Lou. :) Thanks for checking. Xx_

Louis quickly worked at typing out a reply. _You were sad? Xx_

_A little, yeah, but I’m better now. Xx_

_I could give help. Xx_

_No, no, it’s fine, really. I hate people seeing me upset. Don’t worry. Xx_

_I’m sorry :( xx_

Harry sends back a simple smiley face, effectively ending the conversation. 

 

Things really start looking up for Louis when late November rolls around. He and Eleanor are back to a good relationship and his sisters have been nicer to him recently, bar Lottie. Lottie mostly gives him the cold shoulder. His English is improving rapidly and he can hear the change in his words from when he first moved here and from how much he’s been speaking it, he can hear his accent lessening, not as thick in the cloud of British accents.

Rehearsals are going absolutely fantastic and everything is really quite great. Mum hasn’t stopped using him as a free babysitter sometimes but usually on those days Louis invites Harry or Zayn over, using them to help himself get through the agonizing hours of his sisters. When it’s Harry, usually the girls warm up a lot because they like him and he gets them to settle down and watch Disney movies. When it’s Zayn, they’re a little less happy but they’re still pleased. They like Louis’s friends and he feels that maybe through that, they’ll be able to learn to like him as well.

The only bad thing is his coursework. History and English have made him cry at least five times and he literally doesn’t understand any of it. History is worse than English because at least in English they just talk about literature and he can get help from Harry with it. But in history, they tell stories and the teacher is too eloquent and he can’t really piece together the words to make sense in his head. Math and chemistry both kind of suck but at least he’s passing them both and passing them by a good margin. His favourite classes, though, are acting, French and peer tutoring. In acting, he uses his body more than his words and his acting abilities overshadow his inability to speak as well as the other students. In French, he’s getting the highest mark in all of Mme Chen’s classes. And peer tutoring is quite honestly the easiest class he’s ever taken. He helps kids like he helps Harry and he gets Mme Chen a muffin every now and then.

November and December ease by without much fanfare and suddenly, Louis is faced with the final day of school before Christmas break. It’s a Friday and he has tutoring with Harry later that day but he really can’t be that arsed to be upset about that. He’ll be spending time with Harry and that’s really not bad at all. And the school day is easy in itself. The teachers all realize that their students are exhausted and put on Christmas themed movies and give out candy canes and wish everyone a happy holiday.

But the students are extra rowdy and that’s never good. There are some people confessing their true feelings to each other, whether they be negative or positive and there are people that just sit in the back of the classroom and talk as the movies play. There are snowball fights with the light amount of snow outside and at lunch, they all venture outside when it begins snowing again. Zayn and Liam kiss in the snow (“far more romantic than the rain!” Harry chortles) and they just walk through the snowy grounds for a while.

Louis and Harry head in early, the both of them having frozen their fingers from pelting Niall with snowballs and they’re both more than ready to go in and thaw them under some warm water. They chuckle about things as they stand there with their fingers under the tap, both of them sighing to have some warmth back into their digits.

Louis surveys Harry in the mirror, the way he’s smiling so carefully. He gave in a little while ago and admitted to himself that yes, he does have the smallest of crushes on Harry but that doesn’t change anything with him and Eleanor. He’s in love with Eleanor and he’s in a relationship with her and the smallest trickling of attraction towards his friend isn’t gunna make any of that different or come between them.

They step back into the hall, both of them making their way to their lockers to discard of their jackets. Louis smiles at a boy who’s in Grease, hoping to get the gesture in return. 

The boy sneers, nudging his friends and slowing his gait. “Look, princess and the frog,” he teases, laughing.

Louis’s smile disappears, his mood dampening because they not only made fun of him but they made fun of Harry too. He feels Harry tense up next to him.

“What the fuck did you just call him?” Harry asks, a hard edge to his voice that Louis hasn’t heard before.

“A frog, ‘cause that’s what he is, fag,” the boy spits.

“Don’t fucking call him that,” Harry hisses, shoving the boy away so he just stumbles back.

Uneasiness flows through Louis. He doesn’t like Harry standing up for him like this when there’s a very real possibility that it could result in punches being thrown. 

The boy shoves Harry harder, causing him to fall back against a bank of lockers. 

“You’re a fucking asshole!” Harry exclaims, standing up straight. “Picking on a boy that’s new to your country? God, could you sink any lower?”

The boy bares his teeth, stepping up close to Harry. “Yeah, I could, actually,” he sneers. “I could be sucking cock like you.” 

The boy’s friends laugh, each of them watching on. Louis notes belatedly that a small crowd has begun to form around them and his unease spikes. 

“’Arry…” he murmurs, his pronunciation off as he grows more and more anxious. Just two weeks ago he was able to say the H in Harry’s name and ever since he’s been remembering how to make that sound. That’s not happening now, though.

“Fuck off,” Harry spits. “I mean, if you get any closer, people might think that you do want to suck my cock.”

The crowd oohs at that and Louis bites his lip, shifting on his feet awkwardly.

“You’re such a bitch,” the boy tries countering rather lamely.

“At least I’m not hiding my sexuality,” Harry retorts confidently, his gaze strong. Louis doesn’t like it at all.

The boy growls, his arm coiling back before his fist collides with Harry’s face in a sickening smack. Harry leans over to the side, his hand reaching up to cup the hurt area. The crowd gasps and Louis immediately surges forward, trying to pull Harry away from the boy as his fist pulls back for another hit. 

“You’re a fucking bitch, Styles!” He calls, giving up once Louis pulls him a few feet away.

Louis shoots a glare back at him, hating that he’d trusted him just a week before. The crowd quickly dissipates, most of the people in it following the boy while one or two follow after Louis and Harry. He glares at them and their persistent questions, which sends them away as he pulls Harry back into the bathroom.

Harry’s hand is seemingly glued to his hurt area as they step into the bathroom for the second time. He takes a deep breath, peeling it away to reveal that a part of his cheek and the area surrounding his eye is blotched red. He sighs, shoulders sagging down as he looks at it in the mirror and moistens a paper towel with cold water before pressing it to his face.

“Are you okay?” Louis asks, spinning him around and trying to get a look at it.

“Lou, I’m fine, promise,” Harry insists, pulling the paper towel away. “Mum will kill me, is all.”

Louis looks at him, his fingers reaching up to ghost over the reddened skin. “Je suis désolé,” he whispers, wanting more than anything to just kiss it better.

Harry smiles a little as the bell rings. “I’ll be okay. Meet you at your locker after school?”

Louis nods, heading for the door and going to meet Niall. 

Niall heard about the fight and questions Louis to no end about it. Louis manages, through much frustration, to get the story out and he voices his worry about Harry. Niall assures him that he’ll be fine, tells him that Harry is resilient and will just need some painkillers and time to get over it. Louis isn’t convinced though and realizes that that’s not what he means. What he means is he’s worried why Harry was so good at taking the hit and dealing with the aftermath. Niall tells him that Harry used to be scrappy when he was younger, looking for fights and often getting them.

In his next class, he gets to see Harry again and gasps a little when the boy walks through the door. His eye is swollen now and has turned into a bruise, giving Harry some odd appearance that looks so wrong on his kind face. Throughout the class, Harry doesn’t mention it, doesn’t let himself wince when he smiles too widely at something Louis said. Louis constantly worries over it like a mother, fussing and demanding to have a look just to make sure he was okay and wasn’t lying.

At the end of the day, Louis and Harry head back to latter’s house as per usual. The walk there is nice, albeit cold enough to have Louis’s toes going ice cold by the time they’re walking down Harry’s street towards his house. Harry pauses when they reach the front yard, groaning to himself. Anne’s sedan is parked in the driveway.

“Mum is gunna be really weird about my face,” Harry warns. “But after she’s done making sure that I’ve not got a concussion, we’ll have tea and work, yeah?”

Louis nods, stepping inside after Harry. He calls out a weak hello after Harry’s stronger one.

“Hello, loves!” Anne calls from the living room. 

Harry takes a deep breath, heading into the room and motioning for Louis to follow him. 

Anne lets out a gasp when she sees Harry, standing immediately and forgetting about the cat on her lap or the television programme that was playing. She takes Harry’s face into her hands, turning it at different angles before pulling him into the kitchen. Louis takes the hint and kneels down next to the cat, stroking it as it recovers from the shock of being thrown down in favour of Harry. 

“Who did this to you?” Anne demands in the kitchen. Louis is sure that he’s not supposed to be listening but he doesn’t really have anything else to do since the TV is playing some talk show that he thinks looks stupid.

“Colton Walker,” Harry answers. There’s the crinkle of an icepack being exchanged between them and the rattle of painkillers.

“Why?” Anne’s voice is hard.

“He made fun of Louis and I. I was just standing up for myself and Louis and then he hit me.”

“You were being cheeky, weren’t you?”

There’s silence as the pill bottle rattles a little more. Louis thinks that Harry nodded.

“You’re okay?” Anne asks, voice softening.

“I’m fine,” Harry insists. “My ego and my face are a little bruised but other than that, I’m fine.”

“I meant in the other way, Harry. You won’t be ending up in the hospital again anytime soon?”

“No, mum. This was an isolated incident and it won’t happen again.”

Louis feels his chest constrict. _Again_. Implying that Harry had been to the hospital in the past few years. _Again_. Implying, perhaps, that Harry had ended up in the hospital a lot. It made Louis feel horrible for listening in, like he’d heard about the parts of Harry that he shouldn’t know unless explicitly told in their own private setting, not listening to him and his mother.

“Good,” Anne says softly. “Now start on your tutoring.”

Harry returns into the doorway of the living room, an icepack pressed against his eye. He smiles at Louis and the cat, holding out his free hand to help him up and leading him back into the kitchen. 

Their tutoring session is short lived because the both of them are too happy to be out of school for two weeks. Soon they’re on the couch, cuddled close together as Anne prepares dinner and watching whatever’s on. Louis isn’t paying attention, more focussed on the fact that Harry is holding him and has his arms around him. He puts his comfort down to the fact that he hasn’t had a proper cuddle in a long time in Eleanor’s absence from his life. He absolutely doesn’t think about kissing Harry. Not at all.

While they watch TV and while Anne makes spaghetti, it begins snowing hard. Soon there’s a good six inches on the ground and Louis gets drenched in spare coats and hats and scarves and mitts for his way home. Harry walks with him to the bus stop, holding his hand to keep him from tripping over the banks of snow and patches of ice.

They get to the metal pole that marks the bus stop and they stand there, chatting. Louis feels his nose go numb, the rest of him chilling a little without the warmth that walking created. About a half hour in (which is twenty minutes late for his bus), Louis is shivering and Harry suggests he calls the number painted onto the sign. When he does, the automated voice tells him that transit in his area has been cancelled for the rest of the night due to the snow and the general unpreparedness of the city for such a heavy snowfall.

“Well, I can ask mum if she’ll drive you,” Harry offers, walking back towards his house. The sun is starting to set, creating some kind of greyish dusk that doesn’t look right.

Louis nods, shivering as he tries curling further in on himself. 

When they get home, though, Anne is just serving dinner and insists that Louis stay. So he calls his mum, who grants him permission to stay the night if need be and to just keep him updated on what his plan is. 

Dinner that night with Anne and Harry is lovely. Anne is very polite, asking Louis about France and about his family and telling him stories of Harry and Gemma when they were children. Louis laughs through the stories and laughs more so at Harry’s reaction of flushing deep red and rolling his eyes than the stories themselves. 

Once dinner is done, Louis tries to help clean up but is forced out of the kitchen. Once everything is spotless as usual, Anne peers out the window to gauge whether or not driving would be practical and safe. She deems it unfit to be driving in and goes upstairs to find the foam mattress and some spare blankets. Louis calls mum, telling her that he’s gunna be staying the night. He isn’t too upset about it seeing as the night will be spent with Harry.

After Louis and Harry watch a movie, they go up to Harry’s bedroom. It’s a pretty regular bedroom. He has posters over his walls and photos from old family trips and whatnot. His bed is pushed against the wall and beside it is a foam mattress with blankets laid neatly around it. There’s a bookshelf, a chest of drawers and an overflowing laundry bin all in the room and Louis quite likes it.

Harry gives Louis some sweats and an old t-shirt to change into and he changes into his own plaid pajama pants and Ramones t-shirt. The light goes off around midnight but they stay up talking for at least another hour until they both begin to drift off to sleep, Louis in the foam mattress and Harry up on the bed. They’re both exhausted from last-minute tests and waking up early while the end of the term was on the very edge.

Sleep proves more difficult than Louis expects. He has an entire pile of blankets overtop of him and Harry’s room is warm but he isn’t and he’s lying there, shivering and trying not to let his teeth clatter together as he tries desperately to curl into a ball and get warm. Harry sits up after about ten minutes and flicks on his lamp again, rubbing his eyes and looking at Louis.

“Are you okay?” He asks, drowsiness showing through in his voice.

“C-cold,” Louis whispers honestly, sitting up as well. 

“Yeah, the floor’s freezing. I know you have a girlfriend but you should come up here with me,” Harry suggests. “We’ll both be warmer that way, since you stole one of my blankets.”

Louis crawls up onto the bed, so tired he could fall asleep in a second once he got warm. Harry pulls the blankets up, opening his arms too and letting Louis slip under the covers and into his warm embrace. For a second, he shivers harder yet, the sudden change in temperature not really recognized by his body. But soon, he adjusts and he relaxes into Harry’s chest, feeling arm and safe with his arms around him.

Harry rubs his back, holding him close and pressing a lazy kiss to his forehead. Louis feels butterflies in his stomach as he moves his head from the other pillow Harry pulled up and onto his chest, tucking it into his shoulder and smiling. He’s completely warm not, even his toes and even his insides as he cuddles into Harry. He kisses Harry’s chest, suddenly overcome with a want to discard of his shirt and feel the warmth and the texture of his skin beneath his lips. He wants to feel his heartbeat completely unfiltered from his shirt. He wants to feel the steady thump against his cheek as he drifts off to sleep.

He can feel Harry’s heartbeat now, can feel it in the arm that’s draped across his chest and clasping Harry’s shoulder. And he thinks how much he’d like waking up to it, how much he’d like falling asleep to the sound and how much he’d enjoy peppering kisses around the area. He thinks about how he would so like to feel that chest against his, bare and slick with a thin film of sweat. He wants to suck love bites into his skin, bite little bruises into the pale flesh.

And then a small wave of guilt washes over him, reduced in size from his fatigue. He still has Eleanor and here he is imagining giving another boy love bites and he knows that love bites always lead to something more. But he pushes it away as he feels warm and safe in Harry’s arms, slowly drifting off to sleep while cuddled into him.

The next morning isn’t awkward at all. Louis wakes up, still curled into Harry’s side and finds that he’s the perfect temperature next to him. He can see that it snowed quite a bit overnight from his spot on the bed and he feels a little warmer as he shifts to get more comfortable. Harry stirs next to him, green eyes opening slowly.

“Morning,” he grumbles, his arm unwrapping from around Louis’s shoulders so his fists could rub at his eyes. Louis’s heart flutters.

Louis smiles in response, squeezing him closer. 

Harry chuckles, his hands falling from his face to rub Louis’s back and card through his hair gently. Louis nearly purrs, pushing into the touch and smiling serenely.

“Do you want breakfast?” Harry asks, pressing a small kiss to Louis’s hair as he pulls his hand away. Kissing anywhere but the lips is a regular thing for all the boys in the group and they’re a tactile bunch; there’s usually someone sitting on another’s lap. (This doesn’t apply to Zayn and Liam since they’re more than different because they’re dating.)

Louis nods. “Merci,” he whispers.

Harry untangles himself from Louis, standing up and finding two sweatshirts. He tosses one at Louis, chuckling when he puts it on and is nearly drowning in the fabric. “I make some good pancakes,” he says, holding out a hand to help Louis up.

Louis takes his hands, pulling himself to his feet and hissing as his warm toes connect with the frigid ground. Harry drops his hand and paws around the foot of his bed before pulling out a pair of slippers. He hands them to Louis, who laughs and puts them on before following him downstairs to the kitchen.

Anne is sitting at the table, the newspaper unfolded in front of her as she drinks from a mug. Harry instructs Louis to sit while he begins pulling things out of cupboards and arranging them on the counter. Anne looks up at Harry and Louis, smiling a little before turning back to her newspaper and folding it up, pushing it aside. Louis is aware of the tingling in his back as Anne watches him peering at Harry.

“So, after breakfast, I’ll get you home,” Anne tells him, smiling a little.

Louis turns, looking at her and about to protest.

“No, love, it’s fine,” she says, smile widening. “They cleared most of the snow off the road so it should be fine. Besides, Harry probably kept you up all night and taking the bus tired is hell.”

“Mum!” Harry says indignantly. “I did not keep him up all night, thank you. He has a girlfriend.”

Anne laughs loudly. “I meant with your horrible snoring, love.”

Harry flushes deep red. “Oh.”

Anne chuckles. Louis feels a little lost, not knowing what they’re meaning but chuckling a little anyway. 

Twenty minutes later, Anne and Louis are served the first batch of pancakes. Louis agrees that they’re amazing and perfectly puffy and cooked. When they finish the breakfast of tea and pancakes, Louis and Harry both dress and gather Louis’s things. They head out to the car, Louis feeling odd after not sleeping in his own bed and not showering in a while. 

The drive back to Louis’s is relatively uneventful. As Anne said, the roads had been cleared of most of the snow and there was no real problem driving home. Louis and Harry are both silent throughout the ride, having mostly run out of things to say to each other after staying up late talking last night. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable though, it was nice.

When Louis gets home, he’s met with the same distance from his sisters as before and the same warmth from mum. Mark is pleasant, not mean but not overly warm. Louis doesn’t really like him mostly because he seems to take the girls’ opinions to heart and assume that his daughters dislike was somehow validated. 

Louis gets upstairs and showers before pulling his laptop out and opening Skype. He sees Eleanor is online and immediately calls her, wanting to just talk to her after going without speaking for a few days. He knows that Christmas break has also begun for her and that her final week was just as busy as his. He waits while his computer screen tells him it’s calling her and watches as his webcam turns on and his small thumbnail appears in the corner, his wet hair falling in chunks over his face and his glasses perched on his nose.

Eleanor answers a moment later, half of her hair tied up and a few chunks of what’s down curled. “Louis!” She says happily, smiling. She isn’t wearing any makeup but Louis can see her collection brought out onto the vanity behind her.

“Got a date?” Louis asks, French words flowing easier than English ones. He can hear the beginnings of a British accent around the edges of the words.

She laughs. “I’m going to my grandma’s house.” The words sound somehow wrong, rehearsed maybe.

“Ah, have fun.”

Louis remembers meeting Eleanor’s grandma. The woman was elderly and very, very French. She disapproved of Louis on the principle that he was born a Brit and his middle name wasn’t something French but was William. And while she wasn’t their biggest fan, she did warm up to Louis eventually and hesitantly began liking him as a person. Louis joked about how it was all Eleanor bribing her to be nicer around him.

“Where were you last night? You look tired,” Eleanor observes.

“I stayed the night at my friend Harry’s house,” Louis explains. “It snowed like crazy while we were tutoring and the buses were cancelled and it was too dangerous to drive so I spent the night.”

“How was that?”

“It was really nice. Except that I was sleeping on the floor at first and it was so cold so I slept with Harry in his bed. And he made me and his mum pancakes this morning.”

Eleanor tenses a little. “That sounds really fun.”

“Babe, don’t worry about it. We’re just friends and I would never cheat on you.”

She nods, smiling and relaxing. “I know, love.”

“So, why are you going to see your grandma?”

“It’s her birthday next week and me and the group are going on a trip to Paris. So I’m going to say happy birthday and give her a present.”

“You guys are going to Paris? Who’s going?”

Eleanor raises a hand, counting her fingers as she lists off the names. “Camille, Aimee, Alex, Léa, Gabriel… Ooh, and Emilie and her brother Luc.”

Louis groans. “I want to go to Paris. It’s a grad trip?”

“Yeah, me and the girls are gunna look at dresses.”

“Who are you going to grad with?”

“Luc,” Eleanor says, disappearing off the screen to grab something. Louis notices when she returns that she has her hair curler in hand and is twirling some hair around it.

“Oh, yeah, Emilie’s brother. He’s nice?”

“Yeah, he’s lovely. Are you going to your grad with anyone?”

Louis shrugs. “I’m not sure. Maybe a girl from the play or I might just go with my friends.”

She nods, trying to curl her hair in the thumbnail of herself. 

“I’ll let you go, you look busy.”

“Yeah,” she chuckles. “I’ll call you back later, okay?”

“Sure. I love you,” Louis gets about half of his sentence out before Eleanor disconnects. He frowns, shutting his computer and sighing.

 

About a week later after Christmas is when they celebrate Louis’s birthday. Of course, his family celebrated it on the day but it wasn’t really as special as it could have been since they were so busy rushing around in preparations for Christmas dinner. He gets iTunes gift cards from his sisters and a few CDs of the bands whose posters he’s tacked onto his wall from his mum and Mark. And his Christmas gifts follow the same general pattern as well. He receives a DVD copy of Grease and a nice sweater and some more iTunes gift cards.

His party with Harry, Liam, Zayn and Niall is much better. They meet up at Harry’s house and sit in his basement for most of the afternoon. Then Harry leads them down the street to a nice restaurant where they all eat dinner together, singing Louis happy birthday when a piece of cake with a candle stuck in it arrives at the table. Louis flushes furiously when that happens and splits the cake with the other four. 

They head back to Harry’s and the four give Louis presents. He receives a French and an English book from Zayn, a pair of rubber boots from Niall (“for the rain ‘n stuff!”) and a scarf and a CD from Liam. From Harry, he gets his favourite band’s best album, signed by the lead singer. When he opens it, he freezes and looks up at Harry, completely shocked. He grabs the curly haired boy in a tight hug, thanking him profusely because that was probably so expensive and he’s only known Harry for four months.

Once they’ve exchanged presents, they go back downstairs into the basement and curl up under duvets on the sofas. Zayn and Liam cuddle closest on the loveseat while Niall takes the armchair adjacent to it and Harry and Louis are curled under a duvet on the sofa. The TV is on, playing some cheesy Christmas movie that they’ve turned down to a low volume in favour of talking. Harry and Louis drift closer as time goes by until Louis is tucked under his arm and cuddled into his side.

Niall laughs. “You two are just as coupley as Zayn and Liam,” he says, completely serious despite his laughter.

Louis shrugs, laying his head on Harry’s shoulder. He’s full and he’s warm and he’s surrounded by friends and he’s getting drowsy.

“Well, we’re just friends,” Harry says with another shrug to match Louis’s.

“Sure,” Niall drawls sarcastically, nodding to go along with it.

Harry rolls his eyes, pulling Louis closer and glaring playfully at Niall.

Louis sinks into the hug, smiling. A few minutes pass like this and Niall throws one of the plastic balls of mistletoe at Harry and Louis. Harry obliges the kiss, kissing Louis’s hair and chuckling. Louis kisses his cheek around where his bruise had been a week or so prior. 

“Hey, we should do some big New Year’s party,” Niall suggests, leaning back and watching the other four.

“My attendance depends on who else you invite,” Harry says.

“Well, Zayn and Louis could probably get the Grease cast to come,” Niall says. “And my guitar class could come. And like, Liam could get his rugby and footie team to come.”

Harry shakes his head. “Nah, too many dicks. Sorry, Niall.”

“Fine, let’s cut the jocks. Then it’s pretty dick-free.”

“No, I’m not the biggest fan of some of the people in the Grease cast.”

“But why?” Niall asks.

Harry raises his shoulders in a shrug, about to makes some offhand comment about it when Louis jumps in. “Colton hit him,” he says.

The reaction he got was definitely not the one he was expecting. Zayn’s eyes widened a little and that was normal but Liam and Niall both tensed immediately like Harry did. Niall and Liam exchanged a look, scrutinizing Harry and searching for any signs of him being hurt. When they found none, they began their interrogation.

“When?” Niall asks, taking on a similar tone to Anne’s not too long ago.

“The day before Christmas break. Louis and I were walking together and he made fun of us. So I stood up for us and he punched me,” Harry explains, sighing. 

Louis feels a little guilty, not wanting to put Harry through his friends grilling him.

“Are you okay?” Liam asks, concern plain on his face as he untangles himself from Zayn to watch Harry carefully. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Harry says. “It was just a black eye and some pain for a day or two. Nothing major.”

“I’ll kick his ass,” Niall growls from his seat, jaw clenched and anger pure on his face.

“No, Ni, don’t,” Liam says, the voice of reason. “But, Harry, you’re _okay_?”

Harry sighs, nodding. “Yes, Liam, I’m fine.”

Liam nods uncertainly, leaning back and cuddling into Zayn again. Harry is still tense and Louis reaches over, his hands drifting onto Harry’s shoulders and squeezing lightly. Harry flinches, growing even tenser as he turns to see Louis. His green eyes are wild with the beginnings of panic as he turns but calm immediately when he sees that it’s Louis that just touched him. Louis brings his hands back quickly, feeling like he’d just been shocked. 

Harry reaches his arms out, beckoning Louis back in. He obliges quickly, crawling into his arms and tucking the duvet around the both of them.

“I’m okay, don’t worry,” Harry whispers, his lips pressed against Louis’s hair. 

Louis nods, leaning into him and feeling safe.

About an hour after that, the party fizzles out. Zayn and Liam leave together first, both of them beginning to giggle at every little touch. Louis tosses them a wink as they leave which causes Zayn to flush a little as he searches for his shoes. Niall and Louis leave together, living rather close together. Niall has his driver’s licence so he offers to give Louis a ride and he agrees, knowing that it wouldn’t be putting him out.

They’re sitting at an intersection when Louis speaks. “Is Harry okay?” He asks, his gifts sitting in his lap. 

Niall nods, looking at him. “Yeah, he’s fine, why d’you ask?” 

“He jumped when I touch him,” Louis sighs. 

“Oh, yeah, he’s just tetchy sometimes.”

“Why?” 

Niall looks away as he begins accelerating again. “I’ll let him tell you why, okay?”

Louis nods. He thanks Niall for the ride home before heading inside and up to his room immediately. Mum calls back at him, asks him how the party went and he gives her short answers until he silences. He’s tired after the long day and he wants nothing more than curl into bed and sleep (next to a specific curly haired person that was not his girlfriend).

 

The room is slightly dark save for the glow of a phone screen, illuminating the wall behind Gemma as she texts. When Harry opens the door the light from the hall spills in a little and he makes sure to keep his entrance quick. Once he’s got his back against the door, he begins scuttling towards the bed, crawling in next to his sister. He’s so glad that she’s not back at university yet.

This is something normal for the siblings and started when they were little. Harry’s room was closer to his sister’s than his mother’s and she would hear him crying first if he woke up from a nightmare. Once he learned to not cry when he woke up, he would crawl into bed with Gemma and talk to her about it because she was closer. Sometimes Gemma would be in a bad mood and would snap at Harry so he’d go to Anne but two times out of three, it was his big sister that comforted him after a nightmare.

It didn’t change as he grew older and started seeking advice. She was the first person he came out to on a Thursday morning at half three. And she just nodded and kissed his cheek, thanking him for trusting her before beginning to doze again. 

He crawls into the bed next to her, an arm wrapping around her middle as he cuddles close to her. Immediately, she puts her phone down and rests a hand on his head, looking down at him. The silence hangs between them for a little while before Harry speaks up. Gemma knows not to press, knows that Harry will tell her when he’s ready.

“I’m in love,” he whispers.

“Is he good?” Gemma asks immediately.

Harry nods, shutting his eyes.

“Is he actually good or are you lying?”

“He’s actually good. He’s funny, adorable… he’s kind of perfect, really.”

“Are you being careful?”

“Yes.”

She nods, kissing his head. “Because you know what happened the last time you were in love,” she whispers. 

Harry winces in remembrance. Of course he knows. He remembers the hospital trips, the broken bones and the dirty slashes on his face. He remembers the burning pain of being stabbed and how he was close to actually dying. He remembers the fear and the pain and the bruises that mottled over his skin. He remembers his mother’s tears and his sister sobbing at his bedside when he regained consciousness. He remembers Niall and Liam visiting later, the both of them sporting their own bruises and Niall having his hand in a cast. 

“What’s his name?” She asks.

“Louis,” he whispers, glad that his mind is off his old relationship and back to the ball of sunshine.

“That French boy mum talked about?”

He nods, smiling a little as he remembered how Anne had described Louis as polite. 

“Have you kissed him?”

He shakes his head. “He’s got a girlfriend…”

Gemma sighs. “Well, he’s a fool not to be in love with you already.”

Harry chuckles, cuddling close to her. “If he becomes single… do I have your permission to date him?”

“Of course. Just as long as he treats you like a king.”

He nods, smiling. “Thank you.”

 

The day after New Year’s, Louis calls Eleanor on Skype again. They discussed over text how they both had plans for the night (Louis another low-key party, this time at Liam’s and Eleanor a full blown party at Alex’s house) and planned to talk to each other the next day. They sent texts when midnight struck which proved to be awkward with the time difference. 

Louis, despite being used to parties like the one Eleanor was attending with booze and dancing and blaring music, enjoyed the party with his new friends. Niall snuck in champagne and shared the bottle with Zayn and Louis while Liam and Harry opted out, sharing a bottle of sparkling apple cider instead. Liam had very conservative parents and their house was absolutely flawless and they frowned a little when Zayn and Liam kissed for more than a second at midnight but it was all very nice. Louis found that he maybe enjoyed it more than being drunk out of his mind and dancing with someone he couldn’t recognize.

When Eleanor answered his call, he saw that she also enjoyed her party. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a bun that was bursting at the seams. Her makeup was smudged, obviously too wasted to wash it off and her skin beneath it was pale, worn. She squinted like she had a pounding headache and Louis realized she probably did.

“Aw, love,” Louis says softly, sticking out his bottom lip in sympathy. 

She shrugs. “It’s fine. I had fun last night and that’s what matters. Did you have fun?”

“Yeah, I did. I was at Liam’s with my friends here.”

“Was it like the party here or…?”

“No, not at all,” Louis says, before explaining how spotless and perfect the Payne household was. He told her about the sparkling apple cider, which made her laugh, and about Niall sneaking in champagne and sharing it among Louis and Zayn. And he tells her about how Liam’s mother, Karen, had clapped politely when it rang midnight. 

Eleanor then recounts her story of getting drunk and kissing Emilie at midnight in Louis’s absence. He laughs at her story of being completely spent this morning and throwing up at least ten times before she was even able to brush her teeth. He sympathizes when she says she misses him.

It’s halfway through Louis’s reminding her that he’ll be there in the summer that he notices it. It’s on the side of Eleanor’s neck, dulled and blurred through a thin film of what he assumes is makeup or perhaps age. It’s a light reddish colour, some yellow tingeing it and his blood freezes when he sees it.

“Is your neck okay?” He asks, watching her and trying not to get upset. 

Her hand lifts, touching the mark and covering it as her eyes widen. “Yes, my neck is fine. Why do you ask?” She asks, a defensive tone to her voice that increases Louis’s suspicions. 

“It looks like a hickey.”

“Well… It…” she stammers, fumbling for the right words. “It’s probably some of my eye shadow.”

“Are you lying?” Louis keeps his voice even, calm.

After a minute, Eleanor nods slowly. “Yes,” she says quietly. “I’m lying. It is a hickey.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“Uhm… Luc.”

He takes a deep breath, nodding. “Did you… did you cheat on me?”

“We only kissed, I swear, Louis,” Eleanor says quickly. “I’m so sorry, it’s just that I haven’t kissed anyone in so long and it’s such a long time until I get to kiss you again and it won’t happen again.”

Louis nods carefully. “All you did was kiss?” He asks.

“And… he gave me this but that’s it, I swear.”

“Okay,” he whispers.

“Do you forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” Louis says honestly, looking at her. “I’ll call you tomorrow, yeah?”

Her face crumples a little bit. “I love you.”

He nods, ending the call and flopping back onto his bed. Eleanor had cheated on him and that opened a pit in his heart, pulling it wide open. Of course, he hadn’t been completely faithful and some of the things that he was doing with Harry were straddling the line of platonic and not and a lady had mistaken them for a couple but he hadn’t kissed anyone. He hadn’t gone out and let a friend of his suck marks into his neck and he hadn’t kissed anyone on the lips since Eleanor.

Louis rolled onto his stomach, stuffing his face into the pillow to muffle the groan he let out. He considered ending their relationship for what must have been the hundredth time. They were still six months away from seeing each other and Eleanor had cheated on him. Of course, she hadn’t had sex with anyone (to the best of his knowledge) but she was obviously interested in Luc if she was letting him kiss her. And then there was Louis’s growing problem of Harry.

It was becoming strangely worrisome, his attraction to the curly haired Brit. At first, he passed it off as a friendship crush where he just wanted to be as close to the boy as Liam and Niall were. But then there was that almost-kiss and all the times that Harry had made Louis’s heart flutter just by touching him. It was the beating of the butterflies’ wings in his stomach and the faint nausea whenever Harry crossed his mind that brought him to the conclusion that he had a crush on Harry. Not a friendship crush and nothing where a quick kiss would get it out of his system. It was full blown infatuation.

Louis was good at suppressing it, at not letting it get to him. He was good at remembering Eleanor every time he considered letting the words tumble out of his lips. He was good at forgetting about it – that is, until he got in close proximity to Harry and usually when he was curled under his arm with his fingers threading into his hair. 

He curls further into the blankets, at war with himself.

 

Louis hates his English class. He hates it so much. He’s not good at the class already and on top of that, his fellow students are Neanderthals. The boy sitting beside him has actually asked to copy his work twice now and both times Louis declined the offer. He knew that his sheet was too riddled with mistakes to even give the boy anything close to a passing grade (which he desperately needed by the sound of things) and he was just generally against people that weren’t his friends copying his things. 

Not only that, but the teacher leaves the rooms for extended periods of time. And during that time, the boys in the class gathered around where Louis was seated and pulled out a water vapour cigarette. They then passed it amongst each other, filling the small area with the ‘smoke’. It didn’t really make Louis cough or anything but it was obtrusive and it smelled strange and he just generally disapproved of these boys.

It’s not like he was opposed to smoking or drinking or partying. In fact, he usually partook in most of them when he’d lived in France. But these boys spoke loudly about their weed smoking and they smoked water vapour cigarettes in the middle of a classroom while the girls gossiped about each other on the other side of the room.

His day does get partially better. Peer tutoring is always his saving grace and it always makes him feel a little bit better to be in the company of Mme Chen. And the kids in the class are funny, particularly a sassy tenth grader named Daniel that has the best mark in the class. And he basically gets to sit around in an environment that feels just like him; English and French. 

Lunch is bittersweet, though. Zayn and Liam feel like kissing today and that’s just what they do. Niall, Harry and Louis talk over it but Louis’s gaze will sometimes flicker over and just watch them giggle before they kiss again. And a longing erupts in his heart to kiss someone, to kiss anyone, and at this point he doesn’t really care who it is; he just really, really wants to kiss. (Of course, he’d prefer that it be either Harry or Eleanor and maybe he’d prefer finding out how Harry’s puffy lips feel against his but that’s beside the point.)

There’s a pause during lunch. Zayn and Liam are cuddled close together, through with kissing for the time being and there’s a lull in the conversation. Harry is picking at his sandwich next to Louis and Niall is munching happily on his. When he swallows, he looks around the little alcove that Louis knows as theirs.

“Anything new?” Niall asks before taking another large bite of his sandwich.

“Je suis bisexuel,” Louis blurts, immediately freezing. His sexuality had been on his mind once again and he wanted to somehow fill the silence. He also knew that he was ready for his friends to know.

“What?” Liam asks.

Zayn and Harry both look concentrated for a moment while Liam and Niall look utterly confused. Zayn translates it first.

“You’re bisexual?” He asks.

Louis nods. 

Niall shrugs, taking a sip of his Coke. “Cool.”

Liam smiles proudly at him and Zayn winks cheekily, laughing. Harry looks down at him, smiling sort of like Liam except less wide. There’s something in his eyes that makes Louis’s heart stutter in his chest and it makes him feel contented and peaceful, like nothing could ever ruin that moment.

History is difficult and nearly drives him to tears once again and then math is all right. The class isn’t horrible and the content isn’t horrible and overall, it’s not horrible. It’s not good and it’s not really bad but it just isn’t horrible. 

After school, Louis goes to Harry’s and the two tutor each other for a while. When Louis heads home, he eats dinner and gets a stern talking to from mum about his grades. She talks about how his grades were so good back when he was in France and now they’ve all dropped. Louis aches to scream at her about how it’s her fault since she dragged him back here and he has a conversational grasp on the language and can hardly stumble his way through some of his textbooks. He endures the lecture before heading up to his room and getting on Facebook.

He chats with Alex for a while about nothing in particular and the conversation is soon over. They used to have the nicest conversations about the funniest things and it would leave them both in stitches whether it was in person or on the internet. Once their conversation is over, Louis scrolls through his Facebook newsfeed, looking over the pictures from today that some people were uploading. He knew that the first week back was filled with pictures from all the shopping people did and all the new clothes they got for Christmas and whatnot.

He finds a picture of Eleanor, Emilie and Camille, all of them grinning widely. Eleanor looks gorgeous, her hair back in an artfully messy bun and her regular school makeup done. From what the picture shows, she’s wearing a black V-neck sweater that has some sequined pattern in the middle. It shows off the necklace that Louis knows her mum gave her for her birthday and also accentuates her collarbones.

Despite being upset with her, Louis is suddenly overcome with the weight of his longing to see her one more time in person and to be able to hold her hand and kiss her again. His longing translates into a lump situated in the back of his throat and a dull ache in his eyes that he breathes away, pulling up Skype just as Eleanor calls him. He fumbles, a little shocked, and answers the call, patiently waiting for everything to adjust.

She appears on his screen, still wearing the sweater from earlier and but her hair hanging down around her shoulders in loose waves. She smiles a little.

“Hi, love,” Louis whispers, some of that longing being filled.

“Hi,” she says, her voice thin and nervous.

“Uhm, I forgive you,” Louis says. “For cheating on me and everything… I mean, I know that we haven’t seen each other in like, six months and we won’t see each other for another six so I can’t really blame you. Two of my friends were kissing earlier and I kind of realized how badly I miss kissing as well. So, yeah, I forgive you.”

Eleanor smiles weakly, only her lips tugging upwards. “Thank you, Louis,” she says. “But… I think we should break up.”

His heart dives out of his chest and free falls into the pit of his stomach. “What?”

“I think we should break up,” she repeats, voice a little softer this time. “I mean, I have feelings for you but I haven’t seen you in so long and I have feelings for Luc too. And you like that Harry boy too…”

“Eleanor, no, I don’t have feelings for Harry, we’re just friends and that’s all we’ll ever be.”

She shakes her head a little, smiling sadly. “Louis, you like him and it’s so obvious, I can tell all the way from France.”

He sighs, looking down.

“And who knows, you might end up wanting to stay and study and live in England and I might never see you again. I just think we should see different people, yeah?”

He nods, looking back up at her. “Okay.”

“Can we still be friends?” 

He smiles, nodding. “Of course,” he says.

They say goodnight to each other shortly after that and Louis powers down his laptop, setting it aside. He knows he should be happy about all of this and he should be glad that he finally gets what’s basically permission to go and kiss someone (Harry) and maybe even fall in love with a new person (Harry). 

He falls asleep to that thought of freedom. 

Louis gets through the next school day. After school, he and Zayn go down to the theatre for rehearsal and Louis is nearly skipping. He told Zayn about him and Eleanor breaking up and Zayn tried to comfort him but Louis brushed it off. He told him that he’s not really all that phased by it and really, he can see what she sees now and it’s better for both of them. They were only going to be more hurt in the end and ruined by the distance between them. 

And now Louis was excited. He was excited about being single again and he was excited because the performance of Grease is like, three months away and everything about it is looking perfect. They sound absolutely fantastic and they work great together and Louis is getting better at forcing a British accent for his line, though Mrs. Salt encourages him to speak normally. Louis tells her that he’s getting into character, something she urged the lead and supporting actors to do every day. 

Halfway through rehearsal, they’re running through the final number again when there’s a knock on the theatre door. No one pauses because no one’s gone to the bathroom in the past while and if they had, they could use the dressing rooms. Whoever it is can wait until they’re done this run through at least.

Louis finishes the dance, sticking his position and making sure his smile was on bright. He keeps his hands in the air, probably showing off the sweat stains on the arms of his shirt but he can’t be arsed to be embarrassed. Everyone else has them, bar the people wearing tank tops with armholes that reach down to their hips. The song fades out and everyone relaxes out of the position, listening to Mrs. Salt’s critiques before getting a drink of water.

There’s another knock on the theatre door and Louis runs a hand through his hair as he drinks deeply from his water bottle. He pushes open the door, thinking it would probably be someone’s mum or dad here to pick them up early and cause Mrs. Salt to lecture them all once again about commitment and how none of them should have early parents. However, the person standing on the other side of the door is Harry.

“Hey,” Harry says with a smile. He’s dressed for the weather outside, wearing a hat and coat and a scarf that’s hanging askew on his neck.

Louis is suddenly extremely conscious of how he looks, how he smells. He knows his hair is a sweaty mess and he knows that he must absolutely reek of sweat and he knows that his face is probably shinier than a new coin. He pushes all of this to the back of his mind, smiling back at Harry. “Hi.”

“Uh, I meant to give this to you at lunch today but I forgot,” Harry says, pulling a bundle of fabric out of his backpack. Louis recognizes it as the scarf that Harry lent him forever ago and insisted he keep forever. “You left it at my place the other night when we were tutoring.”

Louis takes the scarf from him, smiling at him. “Thank you.”

Harry shrugs. “I should go,” he says. “You guys look like you’re busy.”

Louis glances behind himself, seeing that some people are returning to the stage. Most of the people are still standing by the seats, regaining their breath and drinking from water bottles. He shrugs, turning his attention back at Harry as he takes another long drink of water.

“How’s it looking?” Harry asks.

“Very good,” Louis says. “You will come see, yes?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Louis smiles, recapping his water bottle.

Harry adjusts his hat. “Well, I should get home.”

Louis sets his water bottle on the tile at his feet, reaching forward and adjusting Harry’s scarf. He ties it the way he remembers Aunt Marie tying his own when he was younger and needed help doing that. Harry looks down, watching him and smiling a little. Louis can feel the electricity around them, can feel the tension rising like a basin filling with water. This time, unlike last time, it’s not as awkward. There’s no niggling reminder of Eleanor in the back of his mind and there’s nothing stopping Louis from just feeling the tension.

He finishes tying the scarf and his hands linger at Harry’s chest. His gaze drifts up from his chest to his eyes and he’s overcome with the urge to kiss him. His hands ball into fists, pulling Harry closer and down. Harry complies, moving fluidly until Louis begins to shut his eyes in anticipation of their lips meeting for the first time. Harry jolts back like he was shocked, jumping about a foot back.

“Uh… Uhm, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Harry says quickly before turning and dashing down the hall. 

Louis watches after him. He feels so confused because he was so sure that Harry liked him too. He was so sure that that was the soft emotion he had seen in those green eyes and now Harry had jumped away from their nearly first kiss and run down the hall like Louis were disgusting. Did he get it all wrong? Did he mistake that look in his eyes for infatuation that matched his own when really it was just some kind of brotherly love? 

He turns and heads back into the theatre, dropping his water bottle with his backpack and joining everyone onstage. 

Thankfully for Louis, the next day is the weekend and thusly, he gets to spend it at home. His sisters are beginning to warm up to him except Lottie who’s presumably still frightened after Louis yelled at her. But he spends the weekend with his sisters boringly enough and he works on his homework. He also spends some time perusing French universities because he knows that he definitely doesn’t want to go to university here.

However, mum joins him at one point and she requests that he look up at least one or two English universities that he might want to attend. She says that he could change his mind and Louis reluctantly agrees. Maybe if he gets with Harry then he’ll reconsider moving back to France and maybe if he actually falls in love with Harry. If not, he’ll be on a plane the day after graduation.

Monday is rather awkward. Harry is acting like their nearly kiss never happened and is joking and talking to him as usual in French. And when Mme Chen tells them to pair up for an oral presentation, Harry glances over at Louis, smiling and nodding in response to the unspoken question. They pair up, breezing through the written component of it mostly because they have the Francophone. 

Acting is nice. After easing back into the school year, they’re beginning to be split up into groups for the one-act play festival that the senior acting classes hold every year. Louis is put in a group of five with Zayn, two girls and a boy named Justin that’s rather quiet but a good actor nonetheless. They’re given script, a small play called ‘The Doctor in Spite of Himself’. 

Lunch is perhaps the most awkward time of all. When Louis approaches, everyone smiles up at him but they quiet very suddenly, something Louis takes to mean that he’s not welcome within their conversation. He sits awkwardly by the edge of the alcove, not tucking himself in between the far wall and Harry as he usually does. He looks around at Niall, Liam and Harry all huddled together. They pull away from each other a little, Liam tossing his arm around Zayn and Niall pulling the cling film off his sandwich. Harry taps away at his phone, jotting some things down in his notebook. 

Louis is pulling apple slices out of a bag when Harry abruptly stands. Everyone had been chatting about something funny that happened to Zayn’s youngest sister last week when he does. For the most part, he’d stayed out of their conversation and chuckled a bit at some random parts. He kept typing into his phone and jotting things down in his notebook, ignoring the world around him. Louis was tempted to ask but now that he’s standing, he doesn’t want to. 

“I’ve to talk to one of my teachers about a missing assignment,” he says, grabbing his bag and shouldering it. He walks off down the hall and Louis watches after. 

Everyone is silent for a moment before the conversation starts up again at full force. And Louis wonders if it was something he’d done. Was it the nearly kiss the other day? Was it that he’d come on too strong? He pushes his uneaten apple slices away, no longer hungry and instead nervous. 

Chemistry rolls around after Louis’s spare block with Niall. Zayn and Harry are speaking when he arrives, their voices low. They stop when Louis comes in and Louis feels completely shut out. He feels like there’s something going on that he isn’t supposed to know about and he isn’t sure whether he likes that or not. Maybe they’re planning something for him, some way-to-not-die-this-year party for graduation. Or maybe it’s worse and maybe they’re planning on how to shut Louis out because of something he did.

All through the teacher orating about chemicals and their reactions, Louis wracks his brain for what he could’ve done wrong in the group. There was that time before Christmas break that he’d accidentally offended Liam but he’d apologized and Liam forgave him in a heartbeat. And he had tipped over Niall’s thermos of spaghetti not too long ago, nearly making the blond boy cry until he offered to share the rest of his food with him. 

When they’re given seatwork, Louis turns to Harry, so nervous he feels like he could die. “Tutoring?” He asks, French accent thicker with his nerves.

Harry turns, looking at him and smiling. “Of course,” he says. “After all, the exam is soon and we have that oral to practice.”

Louis feels about a million times better at that and he beams at him.

The class ends not long after and they make their way to Harry’s house through the remnants of snow that was clinging desperately to the grass and the tree boughs. It was still cold out and Louis had learned finally how to dress correctly so that he didn’t shiver whenever he went outside. He kind of liked shivering, though, because it meant that Harry would give him some attention and probably touch him in one way or another and he liked the electricity that flows between them when he does that.

When they arrive at Harry’s house, they sit in the kitchen and practice their presentation together. Louis nitpicks at Harry’s pronunciation, corrects him and encourages him as he tries. They both half-memorise it before beginning to work on English for Louis. And after about a half hour of that, Harry sits back, watching Louis.

Louis looks over at him. “What?” He asks, seeing his expression.

“Can I tell you something?” Harry asks in reply. He licks his bottom lip before sucking it to rest between his teeth.

Louis nods, turning so that he was facing him more head-on. 

“Uhm, I don’t really know if much of this will make sense to you but you’re really good at English so I have high hopes. But yeah, in case, I wrote all of what I’m gunna say down in French. It’s in my notebook…”

Louis’s gaze flickers over to the leather-bound book sitting beside his English binder, the same one he’d been writing in at lunch.

“A-anyway,” Harry says around a small exhale. “I… I really like you, Louis. And I want to… I want to be with you, as stupid as that sounds. But I’m nervous about asking you out because you might say yes and I’m quite honestly terrified of being in a relationship again. I’ve only ever been in one before and it was when I was sixteen.”

Louis nods, having to think with a few of his phrases but otherwise understanding the brunt of what he’s saying.

“I was sixteen and I was stupid. He was eighteen and he was clever. Not really intelligent so much as clever… Anyway, his name was Mike and for the first month of our relationship, he was absolutely wonderful. Like, he was so sweet and kind but he had… He had this side to him that I didn’t like at all. He was just angry at the whole world and sometimes he scared me a little. But I let him scare me a little, assuming I was just being sensitive to my first relationship.”

Harry takes a deep breath, not looking at Louis. Louis shifts a little, not liking where this is going at all.

“I mean, like, I was glad enough to be in a relationship. There weren’t many openly gay kids at school and it was only really Liam and me and I didn’t want to date Liam… But yeah, I let Mike scare me. And about a month into our relationship is when things turned. And my god, did they turn. He was no longer the sweet boy that held me when I was upset or when I failed a test. He… He hit me.”

Louis doesn’t understand some of what he says but the last words fall like icy bricks into his stomach. The silence of the room is impossibly loud as Harry pauses.

“And I assumed it was a onetime thing. Like, he was pissed off about a lot and I pissed him off even more so he hit me. Understandable, right? But then it became an actual regular thing. He began doing it more and more often and he’d make sure to do it in places that no one could see. And if he did, he made sure to feed me some lie to tell everyone else. He… he turned from amazing to horrible in the span of a day.”

Louis isn’t sure he’s breathing anymore.

“S-so, I told Niall and Liam about it since they’re my best friends and I wanted to get out of it but I wasn’t quite sure how. I enlisted their help because I was sure Mike wouldn’t hurt me as bad if they were around. But,” Harry pauses to chuckle sadly, “he did. He hurt me worse than he ever hurt me before when I told him I wanted to break up. Liam and Niall were there with me, just sitting beside me to make sure I didn’t get hurt too bad and to call the police or an ambulance.

“Mike went… he went insane when I told him I wanted to break up. He pulled me up off the couch, shoved me against the wall and he just… he started just hitting me over and over again. Niall and Liam tried pulling him away and after that, I honestly don’t remember much. All I remember after that is that I was stabbed and Niall and Liam got hurt too.”

Louis is shaking now. His hands are shaking and he’s just watching Harry.

“I woke up in the hospital and Liam and Niall were okay. Niall broke his hand trying to punch Mike and he had a big busted lip. Liam had a black eye and a few other bruises. They were both in far better shape than I was, by any means. B-but anyway, Mike is in jail now and I’m left to deal with all of this.”

Harry takes another big breath. Louis can see his eyes are a little glassy.

“I’m left always being worried over by everyone that loves me. I’m left here terrified because I have a crush on someone and look how it turned out last time. And Louis, I know you’re so sweet and you’re such a nice guy but so was Mike in the beginning and I can’t let Liam and Niall get hurt over me again and I can’t put my mum and Gem through that again… I need to know before I ask you out… Are you safe?”

Louis takes the smallest of breaths, feeling almost like crying at Harry’s story. Everything makes sense suddenly, the way Anne had been so upset over a simple bruise on his face and the way Niall and Liam were so quick to jump in and help Harry. The way Harry was so adept at taking punches made sense. The way he freaked out at nearly being kissed made sense.

“Pardon?” Louis asks, the word more French than English.

Harry flips the notebook open, pushing it towards him and pointing to the final sentence on the page.

Louis’s heart shatters as he reads the entire final paragraph, just to make sure he understood. He looks up at Harry when he’s done, mouth hanging open and eyes aching with unshed tears. He nods, not knowing how to say the words he wants to in English. He reaches for his phone, opening his translate app and beginning to type furiously into it. 

Harry watches, Louis is sure, as he hunches over his phone and wills his fingers to move faster than they are moving and get the words out quicker because he needs Harry to know. Once he’s finished, he hits the translate button and passes Harry his phone, watching him for a reaction. Harry picks up the device, beginning to read the (probably poorly) translated text.

_Harry, I would never hurt you like that. I may be a mean person at times but if we were to date, I would not hurt you like that, not in one million years. I don’t even know what to say to you about that and I don’t know how to react, honestly. But I promise you that I’m safe and I would never do anything to hurt you. You’re special to me, Harry, and I wouldn’t let that go._

Harry hands him his phone back, giving a watery smile. “Thank you so much, Lou,” he whispers.

Louis sets the phone on top of his binder, quickly replacing himself on Harry’s lap instead of his own chair. He wraps his arms around Harry’s neck, hugging him tightly and feeling more intense butterflies than before when Harry reciprocates. They stay like that for some time before Harry pushes Louis away by just an inch or two, brushing some hair out of his forehead and smiling at him. 

“Uh, my pronunciation will be way off but… Sortir avec moi?” He asks, watching him nervously.

Louis tips his head back, laughing. “Oui,” he whispers, nodding. 

Harry’s grin is enough to light up an entire city for a month, Louis is sure. “Uh, Google translate taught me this one… Je peux vous embrasser?”

Louis blushes a little, the words sounding so nice when carried by Harry’s accent. He nods. “Tais-toi et embrasse-moi,” Louis breathes.

Harry reaches with one hand, cupping Louis’s jaw and gently pulling him in. Louis doesn’t resist, moving in and glancing down at Harry’s pink, puffy lips. They’re pinker than normal from the worrying Harry’s teeth have been doing and Louis quickly closes the distance between them, pressing their lips together. 

Butterflies positively explode in Louis’s stomach and so much electricity is shot between their lips that he nearly flinches. But he continues kissing him, just holding their lips together steadily. It’s so much better than Louis could ever have imagined and his lips are so soft and so warm and the perfect balance between dry and moist. It’s sweet and small and Louis hates pulling away a few seconds later.

Harry smiles at him, looking a little flustered. His cheeks are flushed a bright pink colour and he looks dazed. Louis doesn’t laugh like he does at Liam and Zayn for looking like that after they kiss because he knows he looks the exact same way.

 

Their date is slotted for the following Saturday. Louis is told that he’ll be taken out for dinner to a restaurant that he’s head mentioned in their group a few times. It sounded like a nice place and needless to say, Louis was more than excited. The only bad part was the very stern talking to he got from Liam and Niall, telling him that he might mysteriously end up dead if he were to hurt Harry. Harry had warned him about these reactions and Louis expected them, really.

On the Friday before his date, Louis is completely organized for it. He has his outfit picked out and he’s got his wallet and house key set out because he knows mum likes having the door locked and he expects to pay at least some of the tab. But he realizes belatedly that he hasn’t told mum yet. He told her about his and Eleanor’s break up and she was sympathetic but he hasn’t told her about his sexuality or his date.

Once the girls are in bed, Louis slips down and sits on the couch next to her. Mum is curled up on the couch, sipping a glass of wine and watching the news. Louis slides next to her, wrapping his arms around her middle and cuddling into her. He did the exact same thing a few years ago with Aunt Marie when he came out to her. He thinks that her acceptance was all in his cuddling and he thinks it’ll probably have the same affect, if not a greater one, with mum.

“Oh, good evening,” she says with a surprised chuckle. Her arm curls around Louis, setting her wine down.

“Bon soir,” he whispers, for once not hating being cuddled close to her. 

“What’s up?” She asks, brushing at his hair a little. He can imagine her doing the exact same thing when he was younger, holding him close and crying because she knows she’s gunna lose him soon.

“I have a date.”

“Moving on so quickly?” She teases, chuckling before growing serious. “With who?”

He swallows. “Harry…”

“That friend of yours from school?” She asks, sounding a little shocked.

He nods.

“Well, I love you no matter who you choose to date. Just as long as you’re happy and healthy.”

He smiles up at her, tightening his grip on her. “Je t’aime aussi.”

He can feel the way her chest stops halfway through a breath, her breath hitching as she reacts to the words. It’s the first time he’s told her he loves her too since she brought him here and yeah, that might be kind of huge for her.

She kisses the top of his head and he feels safe, warm. She asks where they’re going and they chat for a little while before she’s beginning to fall asleep and Louis shakes her back to full consciousness to send her to bed. She cups his face in her hands, her thumbs skimming over his cheeks as she kisses his forehead. 

“I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you too,” he replies, smiling at her. He still resents her for bringing him here and for not taking care of him when he was little but that all lead up to meeting Harry and everything about that is fantastic.

“Sleep tight, darling.”

He nods, watching her pull away and slowly pad upstairs. He stays still for a few moments before going up to his room and tumbling into sleep.

Louis wakes up at about ten the next morning. He goes about his morning as normal and eats lunch with everyone, smiling at the comfort that mum gives him. After lunch, he takes a long, hot shower and listens to music and sings as he does all of it. He relaxes as he dresses in a button up shirt and some tight black jeans. He styles his hair, stuffing his things into the pockets of his coat.

Harry picks Louis up at five. (Yes, Louis spent the entire afternoon getting ready). And everything about him is perfect. His curls are perfectly in place and his smile is the perfect mixture between nervous and charming. And he’s so chivalrous, opening the car door for Louis and shutting it for him and telling him he looks “stunning”.

They chat through the car ride, voices drifting over the radio. The song changes at one point and Harry turns it up, making Louis laugh as he begins to sing along loudly. And Louis is caught up in the sight of him singing like that, face screwed up in a way that broadcasted ‘this is a joke’. But the mirth in his eyes, the notes that fall from his lips all broadcast his happiness and his joy. And his voice straddles the line between smooth and raspy and his control over it is making Louis’s heart flutter and it’s kind of the hottest thing he’s ever heard.

The restaurant they park at is a nice place. The hostess smiles warmly at them and leads them to their table. The place isn’t overly done and there isn’t rose petals everywhere and candles as centrepieces to the tables. But there are Tiffany lamps and there’s a large one in the middle dining area near the bar. There are paintings on the walls and photographs and judging by the menu, the place has been around since anyone can remember.

“My grandparents first date was here,” Harry says softly once the waitress has left after asking what they’d like to drink.

“Really?” Louis asks, beginning to peruse through the menu.

He nods. “Yeah, it was forever ago obviously,” he says. “Back when this place first opened so it was kind of cool to go. And they were like, twenty, I think.”

Louis smiles, not quite sure how to respond.

Harry grins over at him, eyes scanning over him. “What do you want to do after dinner?”

“Anything,” Louis shrugs. “With you.”

Harry turns a light shade of pink, looking away. “Let’s be super cheesy and go for a walk, yeah?”

He chuckles, nodding and smiling at the waitress as their appetizers arrive.

Their salads are delicious and the entrees are even better. And the date in itself is kind of the best one Louis’s ever been on and he’s been on a lot of dates. Harry is sweeter and softer than any of the other boys he’s dated. Where the others were brash and strong and acting like they didn’t care, Harry was kind and funny and sewed his heart into his sleeve. And he also doesn’t even mind Louis’s grammar errors, quietly corrects him and tries to help him find words when he can’t.

The end of their dinner is possibly the sweetest thing ever. Harry orders ice cream for them to share and it shows up in a small silver dish, already beginning to melt into the bottom of the bowl. They’re handed two spoons and Louis can’t help but laugh because he feels more than childish as he dips his spoon into the vanilla ice cream and raises it to his lips. Harry does the same, watching him and smiling. 

They finish the ice cream together, both giggling as they battle for the last bit of melted ice cream at the bottom (Louis lets Harry have it). They pay the bill, splitting it because Louis refuses to let Harry pay for all of it with all that he’s done already. They hold hands on their short walk back to the car and Louis can feel Harry’s palm is sweaty against his. The simplicity of sweat on Harry’s hand makes Louis feel sort of proud because someone is once again nervous to go on a date with him and that hasn’t happened in a while.

After driving back to Harry’s mostly to return the car, they begin their little walk around the neighbourhood. The sun has begun to set when they end up in a small park not far from where Harry lives. Louis holds Harry’s hand again, leaning into him as they walk and resting his head on his shoulder.

Louis breaks away from Harry when he sees a swing set, running over and immediately sitting in one of the plastic seats and wrapping his fingers around the cool chain. Harry laughs, following him and tripping on the small wooden barrier that keeps the sand separated from the grass. Louis jumps up, immediately rushing over to his side even though Harry is obviously fine. He kneels beside him, looking around for any injuries.

“Wow, I’m really sorry,” Harry whispers, chuckling. “I’m such a dork.”

Louis smiles, leaning over and kissing his lips quickly. “You are… eh, cute.”

Harry chuckles, standing and helping him up as well. “You are too.”

Louis slides his arms around Harry’s neck, having to stand up on his tiptoes a little. Subsequently, Harry’s arms wrap around Louis’s waist and then it’s just them, locked in their own little bubble in the growing dusk.

“I know this is forward and we’ve only just been on our first date and I don’t really know what you’re used to doing but… Will you be my boyfriend?” Harry asks, nervousness shining through in his eyes.

Louis’s cheeks heat up as blood flushes into them. “Oui,” he whispers.

Harry’s nervousness dissipates as he bursts into a wide grin. He leans over, pressing their lips together and Louis pushes higher onto his toes to get a better angle. The kiss causes the air in Louis’s lungs to compress and disappear. And they stay like that for a moment before pulling apart, eyes fluttering open.

Immediately, they burst into a fit of giggles just standing there like that. Louis was the first of them to calm enough to speak, just one simple word into the cool air.

“Copain,” he whispers, grinning from ear to ear.

“Boyfriend,” Harry agrees, kissing him again.

They spend the rest of the date in the park, both of them getting a little chilly but not minding too much because they had the other one to cuddle. They sit at one of the unused picnic tables, looking at the sky. Louis loves how he’s learning what it’s like to be under Harry’s arm and how it feels to kiss him. They end up kissing for a bit and cuddling again until Louis is actually shivering even though he’s sitting on Harry’s lap and Harry pulled his coat out to wrap it around him as well. Harry insists they go home and Louis reluctantly agrees despite how badly he doesn’t want this night to end.

Harry drives him home and walks him to the door, kissing him again. Louis considers doing what he did on his second date with a boy named Vic (he invited him in for tea and they ended up getting each other off before he left) but decides against it, remembering how fragile Harry is. So he kisses him goodnight, tells him just that and heads inside. He listens to his car drive off before slipping into the living room.

Louis doesn’t get the chance to curl in with mum again since Mark came home from visiting his sister and her newborn baby and she’s with him upstairs. So Louis takes another shower before climbing into bed, a smile stuck on his lips as he falls asleep.

 

The next three months completely fly by. Rehearsals become even more frequent and go until longer and mum usually picks him up from the later ones. His classes stay at a regular difficulty and teachers begin their usual mantra of telling them how exams could make or break them. The classes also endure long lectures on choosing the right university and how it’s important to make informed choices and other bullshit like that. Louis applies to a few universities in France because even though he thinks he could be falling in love with Harry, he knows that English university will be much too hard for him to handle. And besides, he’s kind of starting to hate how his French words aren’t sounding quite right anymore because of his growing British accent.

His home life has become pleasant, for once. Lottie isn’t cruel to him and isn’t ordering the others to do the same. Instead she shoots him kind smiles but they never interact very much. The other girls adore him now and on the weekend if he doesn’t have plans, he often finds himself sitting and watching movies with them and playing with the twins. And things have settled between him and mum now. He still kind of resents her for dragging him here but then he remembers how it feels to be with Harry and he’s suddenly a little grateful.

And things with his friends, and his now boyfriend, are perfect. He loves Niall and Liam and Zayn to pieces and he’s pretty sure that he’s falling in love with Harry. In fact, he’s made plans to go with Harry and his family up to London for spring break and he’ll be there with Harry, Anne, Harry’s stepdad Robin and Gemma. He’s anticipating another stern talking-to from Gemma just like the ones he’s endured from Anne and Liam and Niall about a million times over. He’s been told that Harry and Gemma are close and so he’s expecting her to be the most protective of him out of all the people in his life.

The saddest thing in Louis’s life right now is the end of Grease. Their week of five performances, one every night, begins this week and he’s immensely proud of everyone involved (especially himself for even auditioning) but he can’t help already feeling the loss of not attending rehearsals and bonding with Zayn nearly every afternoon. 

It’s the Monday before their first performance and Louis spends the time before cast call with Harry since his house is a five minute walk from the school. The two of them watch a movie together, curled up in each other before Louis walks back to the school to get into costume. Harry and his family are coming to the show tonight and that makes Louis a little nervous. He doesn’t want to mess up when Harry is there and he knows that that’s what will probably happen.

Louis enters the dressing room, seeing that Zayn is already there, sitting on a stool while one of the ensemble girls (the one that Louis dances with) is getting mascara onto his eyelashes. Louis begins getting dressed once the girl leaves. The male cast all asks for help with their makeup. Most of the boys are just wearing mascara and the paler ones are getting blush as well. Louis would think that this is the most stereotypically gay part of theatre except that he just loves it. The makeup is the final part in actually putting on a character.

They have magic circle in the guitar room adjacent to the theatre and they all warm up as well. And when they go to wait in the wings with the shadowy stage hands, Louis begins to get nervous. He takes a deep breath, reaching for Zayn’s hand which clutches back at him. Both of them have boyfriends in the audience and both of them are terrified about messing up in front of them. 

And then they take their place onstage, the grand drape rises as the music begins playing. 

The entire night goes swimmingly. There are only a few minor errors with a few of the younger students in the play paraphrasing their lines and faltering a little in the dances. Louis is proud to say that his voice blended with everyone else’s, his French accent nearly undetectable as he delivered his one line. And he channeled his nervousness into energy, singing loudly and dancing with a huge smile plastered over his lips.

Once they do curtain call, everyone hugs behind the grand drape before shuffling en masse to the band room. Nervousness swirls in his stomach, mixing with his stomach acid as he heads into the band room, worried about what Harry would have thought about the performance. He enters the small room which is considerably cooler than the hot stage lights and he sheds the leather jacket, folding it over his arm. 

He sees Liam rush in, trailed slowly by his parents who are congratulating the leads on their performance. Louis watches as Liam and Zayn embrace, both of them smiling widely and he waits by himself, worried that Harry didn’t know about the tradition of coming to the band room post-performance. But then he spots his trademark curls bobbing through the crowd, sees his boy peering around for him and he smiles, rushing towards him.

Harry meets him halfway, arms winding around his waist and he lifts him off the ground a little, laughing. When he puts him back on the ground, he kisses his forehead and Louis worries that it’s sweaty but his fears are dispelled when Harry makes no word of it.

“You were absolutely perfect, love,” he whispers.

Louis is beginning to feel warm again, all wrapped up in his arms but he doesn’t mind. “Merci beaucoup,” he whispers in return, smiling at him.

“Like, I couldn’t take my eyes off you,” Harry elaborates. “You were always smiling so bright and when you said your line… _wow_ , I couldn’t even remember if you were from France or England. And you’re a really good dancer.”

Louis’s cheeks heat up and he leans up, kissing his lips softly. He pulls away a second later when Anne, Robin and Gemma approach and Anne clears her throat. He blushes, letting go of Harry and giving Anne a hug.

“You were wonderful,” Anne says softly, kissing his cheek and pulling away.

Harry keeps a hand on Louis’s back as Robin shakes his hand, congratulating him on a good performance. Louis gets nervous under Gemma’s gaze as she looks him over. He might’ve mistaken it for her checking him out if he wasn’t so sure she was just scrutinizing him for any signs that he might be hurting her brother.

Satisfied, she extends a hand as well, smiling. “I’m Gemma,” she says. “It’s wonderful to meet you. Your performance was amazing.”

“It is good to meet you,” Louis smiles, shaking her hand. “Thank you.”

After speaking to a few other people, Louis gets changed out of his costume and into his regular clothes. Mum couldn’t make it to the performance tonight because she had a meeting which cut into most of the first act and so Anne gives him a ride home. 

The drive home is, to say the least, awkward. The car only seats five and Anne and Robin get the front seats and the three backseats belong to Gemma, Louis and Harry. Harry tried to take the middle but he didn’t quite fit in the space and Gemma didn’t want to “split up the lovebirds” so Louis took the middle seat and ended up squished next to Gemma and Harry. The latter he doesn’t mind very much but he’s still receiving a semi-violent message from Gemma.

Harry walks Louis to the door again, bids him goodnight with a kiss before they both head up to bed.

The performances are repeated four more times. Mum comes on closing night with the girls and they all hug him and congratulate him, even Lottie. Endearingly, Harry wastes ten dollars every night to come and see Louis and always gives him a kiss and tells him that he was wonderful once again. He drags Niall and Liam with him most nights and it’s all pretty perfect. Until closing night happens. They have a cast party after the show, all of them hugging each other and thanking Mrs. Salt for the memories and crying in each other’s arms. Louis hugs everyone, gets them to sign his t-shirt but avoids Colton at all costs. 

The next morning, Louis is packed and ready to go with Harry and his family. They pick him up at around noon and he’s once again squished between Harry and Gemma. It’s not so bad this time since he’s not as disgusting as he was after doing a show and thusly lets himself lean into Harry and sort of cuddle with him as they drive. 

When they arrive at the hotel, Louis, Harry and Gemma all go up to their room. They were given a double bedroom suite. Gemma is rooming with them so that they don’t do anything inappropriate with each other and because it was cheaper to do it this way. Once the door is shut behind them and Harry slips into the bathroom to shower, Gemma pounces. 

She sits Louis down on the couch, sitting across from him on the armchair and looking at him. “You’ve heard this from mum and Liam and Niall already, I’m sure,” she says. “But now you’re hearing it from me.”

Louis nods. He was expecting this, really. He’d have thought it odd had she not done this.

“If you hurt my brother, I will kill you,” she says seriously, looking straight at him. “And like, I mean in any way. If you break his heart, I will hunt you down and hurt you. If you pressure him into anything, I will tear your balls off. If you lay a hand on him, I will most definitely kill you in the slowest way possible.”

He nods again. “I promise I will not hurt him.”

“Good. Because he’s absolutely enamoured with you and you make him really happy.”

“He is sunshine.”

Gemma chuckles. “Yes, he is like a little drip of sunshine.”

Louis leans back, much more relaxed now that it’s over with.

“He’s breakable,” Gemma says after a few moments of silence. “And he’s so sure that everything will work out between you two and that you’ll go to uni together and everything will be wonderful.”

Louis freezes, gnawing at his lip. 

“What? What is it?” She asks.

“I… I am not going to university in England.”

Her face falls and she takes a deep breath. “I’ll punch you.”

He sighs. “I belong in France. I love him but here will be too difficult.”

“Fine. But tell him soon, okay? Don’t break his heart more than you have to.”

He nods again, looking at her.

Harry steps out of the shower, wearing only a pair of jeans and pulling a shirt over his head. Louis, as he has many times, lets his gaze wander over his body until his eyes land on a faded pink scar. It’s a little uneven and it’s not very long but it’s there and that’s what matters. Harry tugs his shirt on, shaking out his damp hair and sitting next to Louis. He conforms to his side, kissing his cheek.

Louis smiles and glances over at Gemma. She’s smiling a little but she shoots Louis a meaningful look, reminding him of the conversation that they just had. Guilt floods his stomach and he pulls Harry a tighter.

 

London is amazing. They go shopping and indulge Louis is some tourism, taking him to see all the best parts of London. Louis buys Lottie a shirt, gets Fizzy a stuffed bunny and he gets the twins a toy and a colouring book each. For mum, he buys a nice scarf that Gemma approves and he gets Mark a mug. 

London also becomes a rather large milestone for Louis and Harry. On their last night there, Harry crawls over to Louis’s bed and just sits cross-legged about a foot away from him until Louis rolls over, half-asleep. It’s not unusual for either of them to crawl into the other’s bed to cuddle, but it’s usually under the covers and scooting close. It’s never really been sit on the bed in the little triangular area where Louis’s knees bend until he notices the presence. 

“Mmm?” Louis grumbles, rubbing at his eyes.

“Uh, this is really weird,” Harry whispers. “But… I wanna have sex with you. Not – not now, obviously, ‘cause it’s like midnight and you’re half asleep but at some point.”

Louis sits up, beckoning for Harry to come closer. “You are sure?” He asks after taking a moment to translate, his fatigued brain working slower. 

Harry nods, crawling beside him and wrapping his arms around him. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I mean… I love you.”

Louis smiles, kissing his head and nuzzling into his chest. “Je t’aime aussi,” he whispers. 

“And I trust you,” Harry murmurs, the smile on his lips shining through on his voice. “So maybe when we get back home if you want.”

“Oui,” he nods, pulling him to lie down with him and pulling the blankets around him as well.

“Sleep tight, Lou.”

Louis nods, shutting his eyes and slowly falling asleep against him.

 

They make their first time together as cheesy as they can. First, they pick a night when Anne and Robin are out at a friend’s wedding and then they organize everything. They go out to dinner again at the place they went to for their first date before going back to Harry’s house and watching a movie. They’re both aware of what’s going to be happening but they’re both a little nervous to bring it up.

Louis is nervous because he’s not actually sure if Harry wants this or if he thinks that Louis expects it. They spoke about it in depth and Harry promised that he wanted it, he was ready for it. But Louis couldn’t help wondering if he was more interested in pleasing Louis (who had divulged his past of partying and hooking up with people he hardly knew) than staying within his comfort zone. When Harry promised to tell him if he wasn’t comfortable, Louis agreed for sure.

The movie is some action crap that neither of them are really paying attention to, especially when Louis leans over and kisses Harry. A few moments later, their mouths are open and their tongues are sliding together and this may possibly be the hottest kiss Louis’s ever had before. His fingers are wound in Harry’s curls and he’s now straddling his legs, sitting with his back to the TV. Harry’s hands are on his lower back and are gradually drifting lower until the tips of his fingers are sitting at the start of his bum.

Louis pulls away from the kiss, a little breathless as he trails kisses down Harry’s jaw to his neck and the exposed bit of his collarbone. His teeth nibble over the skin, all his old tricks coming into play as he kisses and licks a mark into Harry’s neck. Harry’s hands drift down a little more, cupping Louis’s bum and that’s when he giggles, completely destroying any romantic mood that Louis was working on.

He looks up from the mark on his neck, shooting him and playful glare. “Quoi?” He asks.

“Just… it kinda tickles,” Harry chuckles. His fingers take a leap from his bum to slip underneath the hem of Louis’s shirt. The skin on skin contact sends a shiver up Louis’s spine, makes his blood rush with electricity.

Their mood is restored and Louis’s fingers begin to undo Harry’s shirt. Harry’s hand comes to rest over his, stopping their movement and Louis looks up, their eyes meeting. The curly haired boy’s expression is not one of fear and minute panic as it was the few times Louis took things a little too far but a small smirk, something darker than he’s ever seen on him. 

“We’re not doing it on the couch,” Harry whispers, kissing his lips.

Louis pulls away, awkwardly climbing off his lap and standing up. After a sly glance at Harry, he races up the stairs and down the hall towards his bedroom. He can hear Harry laugh, probably tripping over his legs as he chases after him. For once, his legs aren’t detrimental and don’t cause him to trip but instead help him catch Louis as he’s turning the doorknob. His arms wrap around his waist and his lips find a spot on his neck right at the junction of his shoulder and his neck. 

Harry’s fingers dip under the hem of his shirt, this time on his stomach and Louis gasps just a little, leaning back into him. He pushes the door open and uses all his willpower not to let his knees buckle as he takes two shaky steps into the room. Harry follows after him, his arms still around him. He shuts the door with his foot once they’re in. His fingers begin to fumble around with the buttons of Louis’s shirt and the Frenchman chuckles, his own fingers guiding Harry’s.

Louis spins around in Harry’s grip once his shirt is open, pulling away from his arms and pulling it down his arms. He doesn’t really feel very exposed and is oddly not conscious of the birthmark on his hipbone which is kind of splotchy and unattractive. He digs his teeth into his lip, walking backwards towards the bed and trying to make all of this stereotypically sexy. 

Sexy comes to a screeching halt when Louis’s foot lands on a towel he was unaware of and he stumbles, falling back onto the bed with a quiet _oomph_. Harry gasps, rushing over to him to check if he’s okay and Louis bursts into his own fit of giggles. Harry sits back on the bed, laughing as he watches Louis laugh. Louis recovers slowly, finally sitting up and crawling back over to Harry and beginning to work at the buttons of his shirt.

“Je suis désolé,” Louis chuckles, beginning to press kisses to his exposed chest as it appears.

Harry isn’t chuckling anymore as Louis peppers kisses along his torso. He pushes him down so he’s lying on his back, kissing all the areas that he can imagine inflamed and purple with bruises, all the marred pieces from being scratched or cut. He presses an extra-long kiss to the scar, feeling the raised skin beneath his lips and trying desperately to replace the memories that come along with the mark.

Louis flits his eyes up to Harry, seeing that he’s watching him intently. His eyes are wide and his lips are parted, watching him with so much wonder that Louis’s heart flutters in his chest. He brings himself back up from near the waistband of his pants, slotting their lips together again and hovering over him. Harry kisses back immediately, his hands lacing behind Louis’s neck as he flips them over. 

Within a few minutes, Louis is lying on Harry’s mattress, stark naked and watching as Harry fumbles with a bottle of lube. He bites his lip in anticipation, watching him spread the sticky substance over his fingers. His cock is pressed against his stomach, aching with a need to be touched but Louis puts his hands under himself to avoid it. 

Harry pulls his hips up, reaching his right hand back and watching Louis for a reaction. When Harry’s warm finger teases around his rim, Louis’s mouth falls open with a gasp as he presses his head back. He slowly pushes it in, eliciting a low moan from Louis. Harry pumps his finger while Louis shuts his eyes.

Harry slips a second finger in and Louis starting to feel it now, that warmth that reaches all over his body. But just as Harry begins pumping his fingers, he starts laughing again and Louis groans, half from pleasure and half from frustration. Their first time together was supposed to be perfect, flawless as they went through the motions. 

“Quoi?” Louis demands, beginning to grow impatient.

“S-sorry,” Harry chuckles. His fingers are still pushed into Louis but not as deep as they should be. “It’s just… I’m inside you.”

Louis groans again, pushing down onto his fingers and rolling his hips. Harry apologises again, beginning to scissor his fingers before he pushes in a third. Louis whimpers at that, teeth digging into his bottom lip. Harry continues testing things with his fingers, pumping them and twisting them, crooking them and spreading them, all eliciting different responses from Louis (which are mostly strings of obscenities in French).

“S’il vous plaît, plus, s’il vous plaît,” Louis whimpers. His cock is achingly hard and is dribbling precome onto his stomach and all he really wants is Harry.

Harry takes a small breath, watching him and slowing his movements.

Louis whimpers again. “S’il vous plaît,” he begs, hands balling into fists with the sheets.

“Say it in English,” Harry teases, pulling a finger out.

“P-please,” Louis whispers, his accent thick in arousal. 

Harry nods, pulling his fingers out and grabbing a condom. Louis watches as he rolls the condom over his length before pumping it with a lube-slick hand. He looks at Louis for his final consent, eyes looking over at him with a little trepidation. Louis is suddenly shot with fear that this is when Harry will let his nerves control him and he’ll be left here on the bed, his cock dripping and so horny he could literally die.

Louis nods a little, pulling him down for a kiss. While they kiss each other softly, Harry pushes into him. Louis pulls away from the kiss, head falling back as he lets out a moan. The feeling of Harry inside him is so much better than he could have imagined, so perfect that he worries he might come then and there. But he doesn’t, thankfully, and reaches for Harry’s hands. Harry presses his hands back against the mattress, clutching onto them tightly as he stays still, eyes shut tight as they just stay like that for a moment.

And then Harry begins rolling his hips, pushing into Louis and letting out the hottest breathy little moan. Louis squeezes his hands, sure that he’s cutting off some of the circulation in his fingers as he whimpers. Harry adds power to his thrusts, groaning a little and pulling one of his hands away to stroke Louis’s cock.

Within minutes, the both of them are coming undone. Louis comes over their chests with a loud moan, clenching around Harry which pushes him over the edge. He moans through clenched teeth and Louis presses lazy kisses to his shoulder, whimpering with every one of his laboured breaths. Harry pulls out of him, passing him a few tissues to clean off his chest and tossing the condom in the bin after concealing it in the tissues. 

When Harry pulls Louis against his chest, the both of them exhausted. Louis lays his head on his chest, wrapping his arms around him and pressing kisses to his chest. Harry runs a hand through his hair, humming contently. 

“I love you,” Harry whispers.

Louis smiles, cuddling closer. “Je t’aime.”

His last thought before he falls asleep is how it feels kind of perfect to be wrapped up in Harry’s arms.

 

April is warm and rainy, something that Louis is very okay with. He likes the rain more than he realizes mostly because he gets to kiss Harry in it and they both laugh at how cheesy it is but they’re both quite glad. The mixture of warmer weather and rain gives confusion with outfit choices and Louis can never tell if he should wear a sweater or a t-shirt in the morning and always ends up making the wrong choice.

His classes have gotten harder in light of their upcoming exams, something that he’s dreading. French and peer tutoring and acting have stayed relatively the same, though, which he likes. However, English has gotten increasingly harder and his class has gotten increasingly stupider and his teacher has gotten increasingly more absent. She enjoys going down the hall and chattering with the other English teachers, forgetting about the ape-like students she’s supposed to be teaching. History is also hard and Louis’s teacher is completely unforgiving. He assigns more paragraphs and essays than his English teacher does and points out all the errors and mistakes, completely forgetting that Louis’s native language is not English.

Everything is actually kind of perfect for once. His sisters like him and Lottie even smiles and talks politely with him. Louis teaches Fizzy some French, teaching her simple sentences she might need if she were to ever to go France. And he plays happily with the twins, indulging them like a good big brother. He never thought he’d enjoy siblings, being raised as an only child with no knowledge of his sisters as they were born, but he does. He likes playing with them and making them happy is shockingly fun.

Louis gets home from school in mid-April to find that he has two pieces of mail waiting for him on his bed. He flops down onto the mattress, tearing the first envelope open with his finger and wishing he had a letter-opener somewhere. He unfolds the paper inside, jumping back up into a sitting position as he reads the French letter. It’s from one of the universities in France that he applied to, telling him that he was accepted as a student of L’Université de Bordeaux. He smiles widely, tossing that letter aside before opening the next one which looks much less official.

The second letter is from Aunt Marie and Uncle Robert. They tell him that they’re doing well, ask him about his plans for post-secondary and ask how he’s doing as well. Louis immediately calls them, speaking with them about everything that’s happened over the past couple of months. The last time he spoke to them was around Christmas when he could only speak of his new friends. Now he tells them about Harry, about Liam and Zayn and Niall. The conversation touches on university, not staying there very long as they ask more about his boyfriend and Grease.

When the phone call is over, Louis clears the papers from his bed, sticking them on his dresser and going downstairs to spend time with the girls. As the week progresses, the letters fall between his dresser and the wall, down behind where he doesn’t see them. 

Louis stops thinking about university when Friday rolls around. Harry and Louis have tutoring later that afternoon and Louis is more than excited because tutoring usually turns into making down which sometimes turns into messy hand jobs. But for now, he’s sitting with everyone curled under Harry’s arm as they eat and chat. 

“I was walking home yesterday and I saw this girl and god, she was so hot. She had the longest legs and her rack was phenomenal,” Niall muses, rolling a cherry tomato between his fingers.

“You… know this is lost on us right?” Liam asks as Harry pops a grape into his mouth.

Louis shrugs. “I like girls.”

“See?” Niall retorts, grinning. “Louis is with me. Mate, oh my god, she had this long blonde hair and it was so pretty.”

“I don’t like blonde,” Louis chuckles.

Harry tosses a grape at Niall. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” Niall asks.

“You’re doing that thing where you go on and on about strangers and their bodies.” His tone is playful, not serious at all.

Niall snorts, tossing one of his cherry tomatoes at Harry. It lands on his cheek and falls to the ground. Harry’s arm unwraps from around Louis’s shoulders, tossing the tomato back at Niall and soon they dissolve into a fully-fledged food fight. Tomatoes and grapes fly between all of them and a handful of them get stuffed down Harry’s shirt. Liam, Zayn and Louis toss back whatever hits them while Harry and Niall laugh and push food into each other.

Unfortunately for the food fight, the bell rings soon after and the two of them painstaking pick up every grape and tomato that wasn’t crushed before Harry rushes to his psychology class. Louis heads to his math class, still chortling from the food fight.

Math class, as always, is annoying. Munisha asks obvious questions and another girl, Tess, gets too frustrated with the simplest of questions and the teacher spends the bulk of the class answering her questions and giving her one-on-one help. Louis works to the sound of his iPod and stays quiet, not really speaking with anyone because he hates most of the people in his class. That is, until there’s a tap on his shoulder and a figure to his right.

Louis pulls his headphones off, looking over to see Munisha. He screams internally.

“Hey,” she smiles, her eyes not shining with it.

He flicks his lips up a little in the tiniest smile.

“So you and Harry Styles?” 

He nods. “We’re together.”

“Aw, that’s really cute, congrats,” she smiles again before she stands and heads over to her friends.

Louis stuffs his headphones back in his ears, not playing the music yet as he hears Munisha talking loudly with them.

“So, that French kid? He’s gay,” she says.

“Seriously?” A redheaded girl named Laurel sighs. “He’s so fit.”

“So foreign, too, which is sexy,” Munisha agrees.

Louis turns his music back on, loud. He doesn’t want to hear what they think because he doesn’t want to fathom ever being with them. Then again, the thought of being with anyone except Harry is kind of baffling to him.

The class is soon over and Louis goes to history class. He struggles through it, hating every second of it. When it’s over, he meets Harry at his locker and they hold hands on the way to his house. They arrive home to an empty house and tutor each other in English and in French. Once that gets frustrating, they slip into the living room and they kiss for a while before cuddling.

Louis’s head fits perfectly into Harry’s neck and the warmth that courses through his veins is better than anything else. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so content to be with someone and he really doesn’t think that his lips have ever slotted so nicely with someone else’s. And he doesn’t think it’s ever been so nice to hear someone telling him they loved him in English because usually the words were tainted from his mother’s lips. But now the words have been reclaimed and wrapped in a bubble of perfection as he hears them from Harry.

 

The beginning of May brings about talk of graduation and many events that revolve around Liam. He gets into the finals for various track events and thereby drags the group all along, reminding Louis and Zayn, the most reluctant of the four, that he came and saw Grease twice. Louis doesn’t think it’ll be too bad since he’ll be with Harry and Niall and Zayn, which is always a good time. Niall is talking about bringing his guitar so he can strum and they can have a little bit of fun there.

The day of the track meet is warm and pleasant. The sun is high in the sky and there’s a cool breeze drifting over the track. Louis is sitting beside Harry and Zayn, his hand laced with Harry’s as Zayn sketches and cheers every time he hears Liam’s name being called. Niall is sitting on the other side of Harry, tapping his foot to the song in his head and checking out the girls in spandex shorts. He even gets up at one point, flirting with a gaggle of them and returning to his friends with a wide grin.

“I got her number!” He says triumphantly, sitting and getting a high five from Zayn.

“You’re a charmer, Ni, I’ve been telling you that for the past eight years,” Harry chuckles, kissing Louis’s cheek.

Liam approaches, his skin shiny with sweat. He pinches the front of his shirt, billowing it in and out to get a better breeze against his chest. He smiles at everyone, saying hi before sitting next to Zayn and taking a long drink from a water bottle.

“They offered me a scholarship,” Liam says, voice a little breathless as he recaps his water bottle.

“Oh my god, seriously?” Zayn asks, already smiling and glowing with pride.

“Yeah,” Liam nods, smiling as well. “Just as long as I don’t bomb my exams, I’ll have a scholarship.”

“To where?” Niall asks, reaching over and giving him a high five. 

“Durham University,” Liam says. “For football, actually, which is quite shocking but yeah.”

“Congrats, mate!” Niall grins.

“That’s great, Liam,” Harry smiles over at him, reaching to pat his back.

“Cheers!” Louis chuckles, raising his glass in a toast.

Zayn kisses Liam’s cheek, telling him how proud he is before Liam kisses him and turns to the group. “Where are you all going for uni?” 

“Newcastle University,” Niall says, grinning. “My brother went there too, he loved it.”

“University of Bradford,” Harry chuckles. “Mum wanted me close and I hear they have a good sociology program.”

“Durham as well,” Zayn puts in, smiling widely. “So it’s really nice that we can be together.” 

Liam and Zayn kiss again before they notice a silence from Louis. He’s trying to make himself invisible, trying not to be a part of this conversation because he doesn’t want to talk about the university he’s going to. He doesn’t want to break it to Harry right now that they’re gunna have to try long distance as well. 

“What about you, Lou?” Niall asks, looking at him.

Harry looks over at him, squeezing his hand and it makes it just that much harder to do this. Louis looks down at his lap.

“L’Université de Bordeaux,” Louis whispers, shutting his eyes.

“Oh, well, that sounds really nice,” Liam says, always the optimist.

Harry’s hand has gone cold in Louis’s. Ice cold despite being warm and soft a second later. He turns and looks at Louis, who doesn’t meet his gaze and instead stares at the grass near his feet. 

“You’re going back to France?” He asks, his voice measured and hiding a world of pain underneath.

“Oui,” Louis nods.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Harry asks. The others are silent. Louis wishes that they would step in and help him but he knows that that’s unlikely. They’re siding with Harry.

“I… I will have,” Louis whispers, finally turning and looking at him. “B-but I was distracted…”

Harry pulls his hand away, his face showing off all the hurt. “So are you breaking up with me?” He asks.

“No, no. We can try long distance.”

“No thanks,” Harry mumbles, turning away and huffing out his breath. “I remember how that worked with your girlfriend. Eleanor, was it?”

Louis looks away. “It will be okay, ‘Arry, please. I love you.”

Harry shakes his head. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” He hisses.

Louis freezes at his tone. “I was distracted…”

“Dammit!” He snaps, standing. “You should have told me that you were gunna leave before I went and got attached! Fuck, I fell in love with you, Louis, and now you’re leaving! You’re going back to the people you had there and you’re gunna completely forget about me and… Everything we did isn’t gunna mean _shit_ anymore!”

Louis stands as well, not understanding much of what he was saying through his fear. “’Arry, écoute, s’il vous plaît,” he begs, too scared to attempt to translate. “Je t’aime tellement et je suis désolé de ne pas tu dire…”

Harry rolls his eyes, pointing at Zayn. “What’s he saying?”

Zayn finally moves from his shocked stillness. “Uh, he’s asking you to listen and he said he loves you and uhm… he’s sorry he didn’t tell you.”

Harry considers these words for a moment and Louis wants to reach for him, bring him into his arms and kiss his forehead and tell him that it’ll all be okay, that he’ll never leave and he’ll stay with him for however long it takes for Harry to tire of him.

“Whatever,” Harry mumbles. “Long distance isn’t gunna work and you know it, Louis. It’s better for us… for us to break up now rather than later when I watch you fade away.”

Louis’s blood runs cold at the tone of his voice. Zayn repeats the words in French for him and it makes him whimper a little.

“Non, non, s’il vous plaît non,” he begs, eyes filling with tears.

“No, screw you, Louis!” Harry snaps, his own tears already down his pinked cheeks. “I fucking trusted you.”

“Je t’aime…” Louis whimpers, curling in on himself.

“Shove it up your ass,” Harry hisses before stalking off.

Niall and Liam both follow after Harry, not looking at Louis as they walk away. Louis feels the loss sinking in his heart as Zayn comes up behind him, his arm wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him in. He lets Louis cry into his shoulder, he whispers soothing words in French and he pulls him off to the side, back under the shade of a tall oak.

Zayn tells him it’ll be okay, tells him that Harry will come around and they’ll be okay even if they’ll be long-distance. He drives him home when he’s calm, tells him to feel better when Louis clambers out. Louis can’t let the words sink in, he can’t let them plant a seed of hope that will ruin him if it doesn’t turn out. He staggers to the door and heads inside, kicking off his shoes and storming up to his room.

He shuts his door, shedding his coat and falling onto the bed. He doesn’t cry and he thinks that he’s all cried out as he lifts his phone and translates a French sentence into English. He sends it to Harry, knowing that it’s riddled with mistakes but being too lazy to change it.

_Please Harry, I love you so much and I am so sorry for making you pain. Please, tell me us are still together. Xxx_

He doesn’t get a response immediately as he usually does and he drops his phone onto the floor. There’s a knock on his door and he grunts, letting the person know that they’re allowed to come in. He assumes that it’s mum or one of the girls wondering why he isn’t chatting with them about how the track meet went. The door creeps open and Louis keeps his face stuffed in his arms.

“Lou?” Lottie asks, her voice nervous.

He grunts again, not lifting his head.

“You… you weren’t a part of the track meet, were you?” She asks, entering the room and pushing the door nearly shut.

He shakes his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“Harry à rompu avec moi,” Louis whispers, voice going tight again and his throat is closing and god, he doesn’t want to cry.

“What?” Lottie asks, sitting on the edge of his bed. He feels a tentative hand on his back and he isn’t really used to Lottie being affectionate but the touch feels nice.

He shakes his head, cuddling close to her and wrapping his arms around her. It’s weird and she stiffens but she soon relaxes and lies with him. Louis shuts his eyes, just focussing on the other person in his arms and the comfort they’re giving him and even though it’s his sister who was a complete cow to him for months, it’s comforting. It’s not perfect but it feels like hot tea on a cold day.

 

The rest of May is pure hell. Louis feels like he’s been permanently uninvited to eat lunch with everyone in the alcove and he spends the forty minutes in Mme Chen’s room, chatting with her in French. There are a few other kids in there that genuinely enjoy her company and they spend time trying to translate what Mme Chen and Louis are saying to each other. Louis likes it, it’s nice and it’s comforting, but it’s not the perfect little niche that he settled into with Harry and his friends and he wants that little bit of perfection back.

He doesn’t get it. Through all his texts, his begs and his pleads to Liam or Niall or Zayn to tell Harry he was sorry, he gets no response. Liam and Niall have drifted away from him a little, no longer seeking him out in a crowd and making excuses to not spend time with him. Zayn stays by his side, which is nice because he really, really needs it. He tells Louis that it doesn’t matter what Harry’s feelings are towards Louis and subsequently himself because he likes him and wants to spend time with him. In light of all the drama, having Zayn beside him is nice.

Harry avoids him like the plague. He asks for a new seat in French and in chemistry, doesn’t pair up with Louis for their end of the year projects and doesn’t even look at him. Louis notes that he doesn’t really smile anymore. His face remains stoic and he turns from sweet to stony. Whenever they pass in the hall, Harry makes sure to slip further into the crowd so that he doesn’t accidentally bump him. Tutoring is indefinitely over but that doesn’t really matter since Louis isn’t speaking as much as he used to anyway.

Mum finds out about it the day it happens after Louis is able to speak English again. She makes him tea, gives him a big hug and is ultimately the reason he doesn’t drown in his own tears that night. Louis is grateful. 

With his schedule becoming freer than it’s ever been, Louis has more time to talk with his friends from France. When he Skypes with them, speaking in French, he realizes that the words taste sour on his tongue. His once flawless accent that fit in perfectly with theirs is dotted with hints of a British accent. His friends get confused with some of his words and he has to force himself to say them perfectly, wincing when he does.

Prom arrives. Zayn talks about going with Liam, which was apparently his dream last year and Louis is happy for him. He tells him that Niall is going with them and is gunna try and find some girl to make out with for the night. Louis’s heart absolutely aches when he thinks of how he and Harry could be buying their ten dollar tickets to the night, dressing up and going to prom together. Louis was never big on prom but he’d have gone just to spend the time slow-dancing with Harry and maybe having sex that night in the back of his car as it always happened in the movies. 

Louis doesn’t go. He spends that night flipping through pictures of himself and Harry on his phone, most of them from London and one of them with Harry’s family, taken by a stranger. Louis was curled into Harry, Anne on his other side and Robin beside her. Gemma is on Harry’s right, smiling widely at the camera. Louis’s grin is so wide and he can hear the laughter spilling out of his mouth, he can feel Harry shuddering with his own laughs next to him. 

Before he knows it, he’s taking exams in a gym and he struggles through them, praying that he at least passes all his courses. And shortly after that is graduation. Louis crosses the stage, shakes the principal’s hand and takes his diploma. He looks out into the crowd, gaze flickering around in search of Harry. It lands on him, sitting back in his seat and not looking at the stage. His face is stony, his jaw is set and Louis aches to rush over to him and clutch his hand and kiss him all over the expression, telling him to ‘sourire!’. 

After graduation, Louis repacks all his things and once again heads to the airport. This time, it’s not Eleanor he’s meeting before security, but Zayn. He promised to come out and say bye to him and Louis is hoping that also means he gets an update on Harry. At ten in the morning, Louis drives out to the airport with the girls and his mum. He knows mum is trying not to cry and he knows that the girls are all gunna miss him fiercely but this is what he has to do. 

He sees Zayn immediately and walks over to him, wrapping his arms around him. He never pictured this day like this, not once. He pictured it with Niall and Liam, both of them trying to make jokes but failing and just telling him that they’d miss him. And he imagined Harry there too, crying probably and the two of them clutching to each other so hard their bones might snap. He imagined whispered I love you’s and the promise to talk as often as they could.

“Hey, mate,” Zayn whispers, hugging him. 

“Hi,” Louis murmurs in return, sighing. 

He pulls away from the hug, looking into Louis’s eyes. “I’ll miss you.”

Louis nods. “I will miss you too.”

“You’d better call me. And text and everything and let me know that you’re alive.”

Louis chuckles a little, nodding. “Okay.”

“Uh, Harry knows you’re leaving today. Liam’s spending the night and Niall and Gemma are with him.”

Louis’s breath hitches just a little and he nods. Gemma coming down from her flat in Manchester just to see Harry and comfort him must mean that he’s hurting pretty bad. And his friends staying around for the entire day means nothing good either. His heart aches.

“So… yeah. I’m sorry you had to decide between him and your future. Maybe after uni you can move back here and be with him again. I dunno. But you two are really cute together and you obviously love each other loads.”

Louis’s teeth are digging into his lip hard so that he doesn’t cry. He nods mutely, hugging Zayn again before turning to his sisters.

He hugs the twins, kissing their cheeks and telling them to be good. He tells Fizzy that he’ll teach her as much French as he can over Skype, ruffling her hair and hugging her. And Lottie walks into his arms, hugging him the tightest and looking the most upset besides mum. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. She doesn’t specify what for but Louis knows. 

A part of him wants to pull away, tell her that she damn well should be and that she made his already hellish life even worse until she became nice. Instead, he nods, kissing her cheek and telling her to be good. When he pulls away from her, he faces mum. She has tears in her eyes and she’s trying not to cry but it’s not working very well. Her face is splotchy and her eyes are glassy and Louis immediately wraps his arms around her, hugging her tightly.

She sniffs, hiccupping a little and holding him close. “I’ll miss you so much, Boo.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

“I love you,” she whispers. “And I’m so proud of you.”

“I love you too.”

She pulls away and by now the tears are halfway down her cheeks and she’s wiping at them to no avail. When she checks the time, she ushers Louis up to security, making sure he has all his bags and everything he needs with him. And she kisses his cheek, tells him to have a safe trip before leaving with the girls before he’s in security yet. He’s left with Zayn, who’s looking a little sad to see Louis go. He brings him in for a hug, wrapping his arms around him.

“You’ll be fine,” Zayn whispers. “You’re gunna do great and everything will work out perfectly.”

Louis nods, holding onto him and willing him to stop speaking so that he can imagine for a moment that he’s Harry. Zayn quiets, rubbing his back for a minute before he pulls away.

“I love you, okay?” He says. “And you’d better call or I’ll kill you.”

Louis chuckles, trying not to cry. “I love you too. Thank you.”

Zayn shrugs, smiling. “Go back to France.”

Louis nods, stealing the beanie off his head and slipping it on. Zayn rolls his eyes but makes no motion to reach for it and lets his messy hair go exposed as Louis fades into the secure part of the airport.

 

Harry stays in bed all day. According to Zayn, today is the day that Louis leaves England for France and destroys their chance of ever being together. Gemma was with him since midnight last night, cuddling into his bed and sleeping right beside him. Anne popped in before she went to work in the morning, kissing his cheek and telling him that he’d be okay. 

Gemma gets out of bed shortly after that, heading into the kitchen to make Harry his favourite breakfast. He stays in bed, watching the clock as it flicked to ten. He knows that Louis is probably at the airport and is probably hugging his mum and sisters goodbye. He wants to be there too just so he can touch Louis one more time but he can’t let himself do that. He can’t let himself get anymore attached than he already is because he’s been lethargic over the loss of his boyfriend and he knows he’s in too deep.

His sister returns with Niall a bit later, telling him that breakfast is ready in the kitchen. Niall lies next to him, hugging him and kissing his cheek.

“How’re you feeling?” He asks, his voice soft and gentle. Harry hates the tone that everyone’s using. It was the same one that they used when he was in the hospital forever ago and he was so whacked up on painkillers that he could hardly form a coherent sentence. That was forever ago when he’d just been stabbed and beaten within a few inches of his life by someone he loved and trusted more than anything in the world. And now he was suffering a broken heart without subsequently suffering plenty of broken bones and lifelong trauma to go along with it. 

“’M fine,” he mumbles, shutting his eyes. 

“You sure? I mean, you did love him a lot and he’s leaving and that’s pretty rou-“

“I’m fine, Niall,” he says in a stronger voice. 

Niall sighs, holding him tight.

“I’d just rather have a knife in my stomach than… than have this, is all,” Harry mumbles, not bothering to open his eyes because he really doesn’t want to see Niall’s wince.

“Shit, Harry, don’t say that. Louis is just a guy and you’ll get over him eventually…”

Harry sighs. He knows that he’ll move on from Louis eventually and he knows that one day Louis will just be a name to him and it won’t bring about the memories of sitting at the kitchen table and tutoring him. And the kitchen table and his notebook won’t make him think of the day that he confessed his love for Louis and told him about his past. And seeing the scar on his belly won’t make him think of the first time they had sex and Louis kissed it. 

“It’s your first regular break up. It hurts now and that’s okay, that’s more than okay. But it won’t hurt forever and you’ll go back to being happy.”

“Can you stop talking?” He asks, sighing. “I don’t wanna hear any of that right now. Just… let me wallow in silence or leave me alone.”

Niall nods, holding him close and staying quiet.

Gemma forces Harry to eat breakfast and lunch and dinner. He doesn’t feel hungry but he feels a little less sad after he eats and that’s kind of good. By the time noon rolls around, his heart aches harder because he knows that Louis’s plane is probably taking off right now and he’s not there and he never told Louis goodbye. 

Niall leaves before dinner, heading back home and trading off with Liam. Liam manages to get him to come into the living room and watch a movie after dinner. He picks out an action film that he knows has no romance and cuddles with Harry through the duration of it. It takes his mind off the hole in his heart for a little while but then he looks at the time and is reminded that Louis is probably in France right now, with his Aunt Marie and Uncle Robert that he always spoke about.

Harry misses him more than anything. He didn’t really miss him during the last bit of the school year because he saw him every day and was reminded that Louis was still there and he was still in England. Of course, he missed eating lunch with him and he missed pulling him close and he missed kissing him but now that he knows Louis isn’t coming back, it hurts a helluva lot more. He’ll probably never see those pretty blue eyes again except in pictures and he probably won’t feel those warm lips again or the way his body was so warm when he cuddled into him.

He misses Louis fiercely and when he cuddles into Liam that night, it just doesn’t feel the same. It feels like the arms that held him when he was in the hospital and not the ones that held him after he lost his virginity. And he doesn’t smell right and Harry realizes that he might always be bothered by these things that aren’t Louis for a long time.

 

Louis is drunk. He’s absolutely smashed and he loves it. He missed the feeling of letting loose and feeling the bass pumping through his body and dancing against people whose name he doesn’t even know. His head is spinning and he’s dancing with Eleanor in light of her recent break up with Luc (who cheated on her; Louis laughed) and it’s just like he remembers it to be. He leans over, kissing her neck and knowing she has brown curly hair which is nearly enough to get him hard already. He breathes in her scent, expecting the smell of Harry’s deodorant but instead getting a whiff of her flowery perfume.

For the entire night, Louis feigns stupidity. He pretends not to notice the way Eleanor has curves, the way she smells or how her lips are too soft against his. He pretends not to notice her vagina nor the way her legs were too smooth and how her nails were too long and coloured. He pretends not to care that she has a face of makeup and long hair and he tries not to see her bra or her panties and her dress. He doesn’t want to see any of that.

He really wants short, curly hair with a strong jaw and firm lips and a set of dimples. He wants that same curly haired boy’s penis, his hairy legs and his dull nails. He wants a natural, masculine face and he wants a flat chest and he wants boxers and a small scar on their stomach and he wants pants and shirts and blazers. He wants Harry.

But for now, he’s drunk and he doesn’t really care because he forgot how good it was being with Eleanor. He forgot the way she was so gorgeous as she moaned out his name, forgot about the way she liked to scratch down his back and let out the most ridiculous swears on her alcohol-stained breath. 

They fall asleep next to each other, Eleanor tucked into Louis’s arms. He doesn’t like how small she is in his arms and wants to be the one being tucked away again, not the one doing the tucking. He doesn’t like how her hair touches his hand which is on her back and he doesn’t like the way her breasts press against his chest. He blames the discomfort with her body on the alcohol mixed with his lingering feelings for Harry and tries to ignore them as best he can.

In the morning, he wakes up to hazel eyes instead of green ones and that alone nearly makes him vomit. He does vomit when he sees Eleanor’s panties strewn across his floor. Fortunately, he had time to change into a pair of sweats before he sprinted to the bathroom and painted the toilet with the contents of his stomach. He doesn’t want to remember last night but he does and his head hurts and he feels warped and disgusting and he hates it.

The next few weeks are like that. Partying every few nights and ending up in a bed with Eleanor. Sometimes they take a cab back to either of their places and end up spending the night with each other but it doesn’t happen as often as them having sex does. Eleanor asks him to be her boyfriend again as mid-July rolls around and Louis has to fight off another bout of vomiting and explain to her that he isn’t interested in having a relationship right now. 

Something feels different about France this time. It feels like he doesn’t really know his hometown at all and that he’s just a stranger in his own city. His words don’t sound or feel right coming out of his mouth and after rediscovering drinking, he’s not a huge fan. He realizes that he wants to spend his time having food fights and watching movies and making fun of aspects of it. He misses the predominantly male population of his friends and he misses the way they’d all laugh and tell each other stories. 

Louis tries snapping out of this because university starts in less than a month now and he has to begin buying his textbooks and figuring out what courses he’s taking. He tries focussing on the presence of Aunt Marie and Uncle Robert again and how comfortable his old room is. But he can’t help noticing that the house is so quiet without the four little girls running around and waking him up on the weekends so they could show him their favourite cartoons. And he can’t help but notice how tired he’s growing of Aunt Marie’s constant presence since she’s always been a housewife and doesn’t work. He wants to spend time on his own in the house and yet he also wants to fill it with specific people.

The thing is, he doesn’t feel like he fits anymore. He’s been unwoven from the social fabric and that stings a little. He realizes this when he goes over to Alex’s and everyone has their yearbooks. Louis has his from England and it’s kind of strange because his is in English and everyone else’s is in French. 

“The first person I met was Zayn,” Louis says, pointing to his picture. Zayn is smiling in it, his teeth showing. “He had the locker beside mine and he was like, my best friend.”

Alex chuckles. “I thought I was your best friend.”

“You are,” Louis laughs. It feels like he’s lying and it makes his stomach curdle. “But back there, he was my best friend.”

“Who else did you meet? Eleanor mentioned that you met a boy,” Aimee sing-songs.

Louis ducks his head, flipping a couple pages back. Smiling up at him is Harry, his dimples poking in his cheeks and his smile the same lopsided beam that always made Louis’s heart flutter. He looks unbelievably good and Louis misses him hard. 

“This was the boy I met. Harry,” Louis smiles at his ability to pronounce the H. 

Aimee peers over his shoulder, giggling. “He’s cute. Were you two together?”

He nods. “For a few months, yeah.”

“Was he good?” Alex asks.

Louis knows that he’s really asking about their sex life, asking him if Harry was any good in bed. And he doesn’t want to answer that because, while he’s open to his friends about many things, he doesn’t want to be open about this. This was too intimate, too special, to be told to his friends over Cokes and crisps and flipping through yearbooks. 

So he nods, leaving it at that. 

“Who else did you meet?” 

Louis shows them all Liam and Niall as well, telling them about how Niall was so funny and Zayn and Liam were the cutest couple he’d ever seen. 

Once Louis is done telling them about his year, they begin telling him about theirs. Alex recounts the story of Aimee tripping on her own feet as she got her diploma and tells him about how Gabriel received so many awards that he needed help carrying all of them. They tell him stories about the year and about all the parties they hosted and attended, about the teachers and the coursework. As they talk, Louis realizes that he didn’t really miss it at all. He’d rather have Mme Chen as a teacher rather than M Laroche and he’d rather spend his lunches in that elevator and roof access alcove than sitting at one of the cafeteria benches.

He doesn’t fit anymore. He doesn’t really enjoy partying as much as he used to and while it was fun for the first few nights, he finds himself making up excuses to not go to them. His conversations with his friends are awkward, stinted and usually one-sided. His bed doesn’t feel the same and the house is too quiet and he has nothing to do anymore. He’s run out of books and he doesn’t enjoy his friends’ company as much as he used to and he doesn’t have any little sisters to play with. 

When Louis realizes, he curls into bed and he doesn’t answer his phone and he doesn’t get up. He’s overcome with homesickness for a place that he never really considered home but now he realizes that it was home. Since the day he was born, that was his home and he was taken away from it. It’s kind of a huge thing for him to realize and he spends the entire morning pondering it, just lying there and thinking.

His absence at the lunch table is noted and Aunt Marie comes up to check on him. He remembers being younger, about nine or ten, and feeling so sick that he wouldn’t even move for fear of throwing up. Aunt Marie noticed and she came upstairs to check and she calmed him down. Louis thinks that she’s doing the same thing now, worried that he feels sick and might be sick in his wastebasket again.

She sits on the edge of his bed, her hand laying on his back. “Are you okay?” She asks.

He shrugs. 

“Do you miss that boy?”

He nods.

“It’s only the first week of August, Lou. You have time to go back if you want.”

He sighs. “I don’t belong here,” he whispers. 

“I know, sweetheart. So call your mum before she gives Lottie your room.”

“But… what about you?”

“Me and your uncle will be fine, Louis,” she murmurs, leaning down and kissing his temple. “Just visit us sometimes, all right? We’ll visit you too.”

He nods, smiling at her and reaching up to hug her tightly.

 

Harry’s gotten good at masking it. He knows now how to put on a face that doesn’t crumple every single time he sees something that reminds him of Louis. He’s reverted back into normalcy, trying to forget about the way his lips felt or how small his hand was and how it was always keeping him steady. He’s learned to nod and smile when mum or Liam or Niall asks him if he’s okay. He’s remembered how to function and laugh again. 

Beneath all of that, he misses Louis fiercely. He doesn’t care if Louis didn’t tell him he was going back to France in the beginning; he’s willing to forgive that. He just wants Louis back and wants to tell him he’s sorry. He wants to hold his hand again and curl him in under his arm and kiss him, at least one last time. 

He considers sending Louis a text. Then he remembers the stories Louis told about getting drunk every Saturday and spending every Sunday with his head firmly stuck in the toilet. Assuming he was partying, he deleted the draft and went to bed. And when he’s sure that Louis couldn’t be partying that much, he drafts another text. He ends up deleting it too, not having the guts to send it. He lays his phone down again, just wishing that he could tell Louis that he was forgiven and that he loved him too.

 

Louis arrives back in England on a rainy day. He spends the first half of it getting his things reorganized before reuniting with the girls and his mum. He suffers that same revolting thunk as his mind changes gears from French to English and his accent doesn’t have as much of a British tint to it. He indulges in the language for a little while, getting his memory going and relearning a lot of words. He goes through his English notes from tutoring with Harry and gets progressively more nervous.

He has no clue how Harry will react. From how the boy acted at school, he was pissed. And Louis can’t help but wondering if time will have calmed Harry and gotten him to feel better. He wonders if Harry misses him as much as he misses Harry. He wonders if he thinks of him at all and how he reacts to those thoughts. Does he dig his nails into his palms to force away his name and his face? Does he wince and tense up? Or does he simply sigh?

Louis goes to a corner store not far from where he lives and he buys a single rose since that’s all he can afford. Then he catches a bus to Harry’s house as it begins raining. It’s still raining when he gets off the bus and Louis curses himself for forgetting an umbrella and turns up his hood. As he gets closer to his house, he prays that Harry is either home alone or the one to answer the door. He doesn’t want to face Anne’s wrath. He knows that if Harry was as hurt as he seemed on the day they broke up, Anne will be pissed.

His hood is damp and his pants are growing cold against his legs as he approaches the front door. He takes a deep breath, belatedly realizing that he has no script to go by as he reaches up and knocks on the door. He shifts on his feet, listening to someone begin to come down the front stairs to open the door. His heart is pounding in his chest because he has no idea what he’s gunna say or do and all he wants is for Harry to forgive him or at least nod when he says he’s sorry.

The door opens and the warmth and light from inside spills onto the front step. Louis can smell whatever dinner is and he’s quite hungry now. His gaze flicks up to see Anne, her face made-up and her work clothes still on.

“Oh,” she says, a little shocked. The smile has fallen from her face.

“Can I speak to Harry please?” Louis asks. He hopes she has some sympathy for him and allows him at least ten seconds, all he needs is ten seconds.

“No,” Anne says, voice hard. “Absolutely not. You need to leave.”

Louis’s eyes widen and he clutches the rose in his hands a little more. His blood is running cold and he’s worried that something’s happened to Harry. “P-please? Very quick..”

“No, Louis.”

“Anne, s’il vous plaît, dix seconds, s’il vous plaît.”

She blinks, confusion plain on her face. “Uhm…” 

“S’il vous plaît,” he begs, desperation on his face.

“I really think you should go,” she says.

“Mum?” Harry asks. Louis’s heart doubles its rate. “Who’re you talking to?”

“No one, love, go upstairs,” Anne says quickly.

Louis can nearly see Harry narrowing his eyes as he approaches, easily peering over Anne’s shoulder to see Louis. Louis offers him a shy smile, his hands beginning to quake around the plastic of the rose. Harry’s eyes widen, his expression softens and it looks like he’s fighting back his own smile. 

“Harry, go upstairs,” Anne says in a firm voice, trying to push him back a little.

“What does he want?” Harry asks.

“Nothing, go upstairs.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“No, I’m not having you mope around for the rest of the summer while I still have you until you go off to uni. Go upstairs, Harry.”

“I won’t mope around, mum, I promise. Let me talk to him.”

Anne sighs, stepping back. “Fine. But if he makes you upset…” she leaves the threat hanging, turning and walking back upstairs.

Harry shuts the door behind him as he steps outside, safely under the thin awning and protected from the rain. He looks no different except his hair is a little wilder and he looks well-rested instead of tired from waking up so early. He’s got on a hoodie and a simple pair of jeans and his eyes look Louis over, taking in his dripping outfit and spending a second longer on the rose in his shaking hands.

“You’re wet,” Harry whispers.

Louis nods, looking up at him. Out of all the ways he pictured this going, this was never one of them. 

“Are you cold?” His expression is slightly worried, surveying him closely for any signs of it.

Louis shakes his head, his hand with the rose extending. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. 

Harry looks at the rose, finally unable to fight off his smile as he takes it and looks at it. There’s a light flush on his cheeks, extending up to his visible ears. 

“I am so sorry,” Louis whispers, finally gaining his voice back.

Harry begins shrugging, opening his mouth and probably trying to tell him that it really wasn’t a big deal and he’d forgiven him ages ago. The thought of that happening nearly sickens Louis because Harry can’t just forgive him like that, no, he should be angry. He should be livid, throwing the rose down and screaming at Louis to get his ass back to France. 

“No,” Louis interrupts. “No, Harry, I am so sorry. I should have tell you that I was going back b-before we dating. But I did not and I hurt you. I’m so, so sorry.”

Harry nods, his grin gone. “I forgive you.”

Louis’s heart nearly jumps out of his chest because that’s the best thing he’s heard in his entire life. He blinks, looking up at him and fighting off a grin because he still has more to say and he doesn’t want to come off as insincere.

“I am living in England again,” he says softly. “I am still safe and I still love you very much. Eh, copain?” 

Harry grins widely, nodding. “Boyfriend,” he agrees, opening his arms for him.

Louis walks into his arms, wrapping his own around his torso and burying his face in his chest. He drinks in his scent, memorizes the feeling of his arms around him and how he can hear his heart hammering under his breastplate, just as nervous and excited as he is. They stay like that for what feels like forever and Louis dampens Harry’s clothes with his but he’s warmer now and he pulls away from the embrace to look up at his face.

When they kiss, Louis is reminded of perfect Harry feels against him, how much nicer it is than Eleanor’s too-glossy lips or someone else’s lips. His stomach is a butterfly emporium, fluttering and making a little bit of nausea circle around his head. He’s reminded of why he came back from what could’ve been a very good life back in Bordeaux with all his friends from there. 

When they kiss, Louis feels at home.

 

After a summer of near perfection, Harry and Louis go to Bradford together. It’s too late for Louis to get into the fall semester but he studies hard and applies for the winter semester, getting in. He and Harry move into a small flat together and they both work part-time to help pay for it. Their mothers, of course, pitch in with their education and their housing. 

Mum was absolutely tickled that Harry and Louis had gotten back together. She invited Harry for dinner and was so pleased with his manners and how “fond he looks” over Louis that she nearly got misty-eyed. Anne, on the other hand, was not as pleased. She gave Louis an hour-long lecture about how he should be treating her boy versus how he did treat her boy. He promises to make it up to her and show her that he’s still the same Louis that she took to London with her husband and her children. He promises to be the same Louis that made Harry smile so big that his dimples were permanent fixtures in his face.

Liam, Zayn and Niall all welcome Louis back into their group with wide-open arms. They thank him for coming back, telling him that it was hard seeing Harry without him and telling him that he was like a lost puppy. Liam, however, also told him never to do anything like that ever again. Niall nodded along with what he was saying before telling Louis about his girlfriend (a brunette that works with him at Starbucks).

Louis stays in contact with Aunt Marie and Uncle Robert and a few of his friends from France. They don’t consider themselves best friends anymore but Louis likes talking to them and keeping his French polished up so he never forgets that part of himself.

For their first week of setting up their flat, Harry and Louis take breaks from grunting boxes and sit on any surface available. They hold hands and teach other new words in their respective languages, just enjoying the company and the feeling of the words on their tongues and how they sound around them. Harry is good at French now, able to tell simple stories in the language. Louis is even better at English, able to hold steady conversations without translating too much of it on his phone. 

Gemma visits their flat before school starts again, stopping by on her way back to Manchester. Harry is out when she arrives, buying some groceries before the start of school and Louis stayed home, not even really knowing what they needed. She apparently had her own key to the flat and burst in, scaring the shit out of Louis as she pulls him up off the sofa and pins him against the wall.

“If you _ever_ do that to my brother again, I _will_ kill you,” she hisses, her face an inch away from his. Some spittle gets on his face but he can’t really be arsed to mind since he’s pretty terrified.

He nods, too scared to form a coherent sentence in either French or English.

“Good,” she huffs, pulling away from him a little. “Like, do you know what Niall told me he said? Apparently he said that he’d rather have a knife in his stomach than feel like he did.”

Louis’s blood runs cold. “I will not hurt him again.”

She nods. “Good,” she says. “Like, even if you two get in a fight, I’ll come and I’ll punch you in the balls or something.

He nods, taking his seat again. Gemma sits next to him, looking around the flat and commenting on how it’s a nice place. 

Harry gets back about fifteen minutes later and he and Gemma say hi to each other before she leaves for Manchester. Harry goes about beginning to make dinner and Louis watches him, remembering what Niall told Gemma. He stands up, walking over to Harry at the stove, wrapping his arms around his middle and placing a kiss to his back. He holds him close, his thumb drifting over the spot he knows that pinkish scar is.

“I love you,” Louis whispers.

Harry chuckles a little, one of his hands resting over Louis’s. “I love you too,” he says.

“Niall said that you… you said you would rather be stabbed than not have me around.”

Harry tenses. “I was really quite emotional, Louis. I… I wasn’t really in my right mind when I said that.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis sighs. This has happened a few times in their time living together. Louis is reminded of how upset Harry was when he went back to France and he feels the guilt all over again. That night is always filled with long kisses and tight cuddles and everything good that makes them both feel safe and good.

Harry reminds him that he’s forgiven before shooing him away so that he can cook better. Louis watches from their little kitchen table, smiling. When Harry serves, Louis compliments him a thousand times over because everything he makes always tastes so good even though they can’t afford the best food available. Harry can make it taste like a five star dish and that’s pretty perfect especially considering Louis’s inability to cook anything more than a hot dog and boxed macaroni and cheese.

That night is slow, loving sex where they both moan out an I love you before they come. And they lie next to each other, curled in each other’s arms when they fall asleep.

The fall semester goes by quickly and during some of the weekends when Harry’s homework is lighter than normal, they make the hour-long trip back home to see their families. It so happens that mum and Anne have now met each other and are beginning to form a friendship. Plastered all over their Facebook and Twitter accounts are pictures of themselves out together for drinks or for coffee or shopping and seeing some sort of comedic item in the store and having to take a picture with it. For Harry and Louis, the pictures are embarrassing but the friendship is much better.

Their friendship means that Anne is now joking about the two of them getting married rather than pleading with Harry to break up with Louis. Their friendship gives Louis’s sisters an older female figure who they love to bits. Gemma takes them shopping and gives them little makeovers, something Louis finds so endearing that his heart just about bursts. 

Harry and Louis keep in contact with Niall, Liam and Zayn via Skype and texting. On the weekends they don’t manage to visit their families, they call the boys and just talk about things and it’s kind of just like old times. They joke and they have a food fight with Niall over the computer. Louis and Harry toss crisps and kernels of cereal at the screen, laughing so hysterically loud that their neighbours bang on the door. The mess is nearly impossible to clean up later, the screen greasy from the crisps and bits of cereal stuck under the keys of the keyboard. But neither of them mind wiping the screen off and use a handheld vacuum to get the bits of cereal out. 

The fall semester is over shockingly quickly and all five of the boys go back home to visit their families and spend Christmas with each other. They spend Boxing Day together, curling up at Liam’s house while his parents try and get in on the deals at the shops. They’re all thrown around the room, Liam and Zayn lying together over the sofa. Niall is sitting against a pile of cushions and blankets on the floor, sipping eggnog spiked with rum. Louis has the same drink as he cuddles on Harry’s lap, the two of them curled together.

They all ate turkey sandwiches together, using the leftovers from Liam’s dinner last night to make a lunch. They also exchanged presents, which was quite fun. Harry and Louis along with Zayn and Liam had already given each other gifts the day prior so they cut some time down with that. Their gifts were all thoughtful but none of them were really expensive like they were last year since their budgets had gone down quite a bit since last year.

Once they’d exchanged presents and eaten lunch and were now sitting there sipping eggnog and curling together, they chatted as they always did. Niall told them all about Victoria, his girlfriend, and told them that he’d bring her to their New Year’s party (“We are having a New Year’s party, right?”). They spoke about their classes, a topic Louis felt a little left out on. And they talked about their families, joking and laughing together.

Silence fell over them for a little while and Louis finished his eggnog and rum, sitting the empty glass on the coffee table after shifting awkwardly in Harry’s lap to reach it. He curls back into him the moment he sits up, sighing happily.

“God, I feel like such a fifth wheel,” Niall laughs.

“Should’ve brought Victoria,” Liam retorts.

“She’s with her family, I’ll have you know. She became an aunt last week.”

“Oh, well, congratulations to her sibling.”

“Yeah, her brother. He got married a month ago. It was really cute.” 

“You’ve attended more weddings than concerts and that’s really weird for someone who’s studying music,” Harry points out.

Niall shrugs. “I’d have to go down to like, London or at least to Manchester to see a decent concert and my mum would never let me. She would now, o’ course, but now I don’t have the money and she wouldn’t pay for me. Besides, weddings are fun. No one cares if you get smashed on champagne and there’s usually at least some girl to flirt with.”

Zayn rolls his eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t flirt with people at your girlfriend’s brother’s wedding.”

“Nope!” 

Louis sighs, a little overdramatic. “I’ve never been to a wedding.”

“Really?” Niall asks, looking at him, shocked. 

Louis shakes his head. “Never. I nearly went to Eleanor’s uncle’s wedding but she ended up not going because their ceremony was held at six in the morning.”

“Yuck,” Harry muses. “What a disgusting time to be married.”

“I’d rather have my wedding in the afternoon,” Liam says. “That way, I don’t have to be up at the arse-crack of dawn to get ready.”

Zayn is looking at Liam with a fond smile, totally entranced with him. 

Niall laughs. “Look out, Li, your wedding could be coming sooner than you hoped.”

Liam laughs, kissing Zayn’s forehead. Louis swears that he sees his lips move in a hushed “one day”. 

Louis melts into the bickering and joking, the fake insults and the two couples taking turns stealing Niall’s mistletoe hat. And he feels so comfortable, so perfect and warm that he knows this is his home.


End file.
